Slashdot Mirror
FWD.us To Laid-Off Southern California Edison Workers: Boo-Hoo
theodp writes: Speaking at a National Journal LIVE event that was sponsored by Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us and Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective, FWD.us "Major Contributor" Lars Dalgaard was asked about the fate of 500 laid-off Southern California Edison IT workers, whose forced training of their H-1B worker replacements from offshore outsourcing companies sparked a bipartisan Senate investigation. "If you want the job, make yourself able to get the job," quipped an unsympathetic Dalgaard (YouTube). "Nobody's going to hold you up and carry you around...If you're not going to work hard enough to be qualified to get the job...well then, you don't deserve the job." "That might be harsh," remarked interviewer Niharika Acharya. Turning to co-interviewee Pierre-Jean Cobut, FWD.us's poster child for increasing the H-1B visa cap, Acharya asked, "Do you agree with him?" "Actually, I do," replied PJ, drawing laughs from the crowd.
These guys are jerks. Obviously the Edison IT workers were qualified - they trained their replacements. Equally obvious they were available to do the job, so there was no reason to bring in H1Bs. Outright fraud by Edison, abetted by the government.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
10/10, top libertarian trolling, would read again!
Fair is fair, so let's make sure it cuts both ways, all the way up the management chain. Let anyone who can and is willing to do the CEO job for less $ take the position, and have to have the current CEO train his replacement.
I'm not religious, but this kind of shit only makes me think of that famous line: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Circumcision is child abuse.
Corporations are not, and have never been, the job creators. Customers are the job creators.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Hilarious how vicious, right wing libertarians with a FYGM mentality also end up on the chopping block. Obviously if they didn't want to be fired they should have bootstrapped themselves to a job that couldn't have been onshored by H1Bs.
Edison wanted cheaper workers, plain and simple. Dalgaard and Cobut should be ashamed of themselves, but slimeballs like that know no shame.
If you go to FWD.us, it gives a nice list of who the "Founders" and "Major Contributors" of the group are.
This saves us from having to knit their names into scarves.
Well PJ, direct from your web-site http://letpjstay.com/
"PJ, the co-founder of Echo Labs, always dreamed of starting a company in the United States, but if he doesn't get an H1-B visa, he'll have to move Echo Labs to Canada."
And my response to you is,
If you want the H1B, make yourself able to get the H1B. Otherwise, enjoy Canadia...
CEO type is an arsehole.
The only thing the IT workers weren't qualified in was the willingness to to exactly the same work for a significant pay cut.
CEO type thinks that workers should accept that to be "competitive in a global economy" while arguing that he's personally worth his multi-million dollar pay check despite the fact that his pay is not linked to his performance.
TLDR; rich guy thinks poor people should make less money so he can make more. Or, greed is good.
This is why it's morally OK to fuck over corporations.
The beatings^Wlayoffs will continue until morale improves.
Right? Now witness your bargaining power. Pride goes before the fall.
Too difficult to find work in your own country, PJ? Work harder. I don't care about your dreams to open up a business in America, I care about the reality of my country's economic future. You were wealthy enough to leave your country to find work - our work - I'm sure you're wealthy and hard-working enough to go back.
No. Those "leftists" want to ensure that workers have more control over their own lives. This is inherently difficult to do when employers, both individually and collectively, have much more power than the employee.
An employee who is fired loses their livelihood.
An employer who has an employee that quits loses some of their capacity to do business. Depending upon the size of their business, that loss in capacity ranges from negligible to critical-but-not-fatal.
There are various ways to balance that power. Regulation is one means. Unionization is another approach. Of course, controlling supply (e.g. limiting H1B's) is also a valuable tool for changing the balance. Note that I say balancing power. Even many staunch union supporters would agree that giving workers more power than employers is a bad idea.
"If you want the job, make yourself able to get the job"
I wanted the job so hard I tried to get my DNA to change so that I was Indian but my damn lazy American genome would not cooperate.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The hypocrisy of slashdotters on this one is quite funny. "First they came for the non-IT workers, and we couldn't care less."
Anyone in IT needs to pay attention to this, it's a rare insight into how management and executes see the labor force.
Just remember "qualified" is the term that HAS to be used when referring to terminated manpower or lawsuits would run wild. Lack of a unionized labor force of IT also puts the nail in the coffin. But we all know "qualified" means "cheap, simpleminded and easily replaceable manpower".
IT talent means nothing to the board, remember that always.
Corporations in the United States are a legal invention of the citizens of the United States. They were created because the citizens believed that corporations would provide more good to the country than bad.
If it seems to the citizens that corporations are providing more bad than good, we can dissolve corporations. Now of course this will be difficult to do in the current political and social landscape. In the extremity, though, we can always return to the ways of the Founding Fathers, meet the armed goons of the government on the battlefield, and blow their brains out.
I do not expect that that happen in my lifetime, frankly. However, what is much more likely to happen, and far sooner, is that one of these workers who are told to train their H1B replacements will arrange on their first day to usher them all into a large meeting room, lock the doors, and shoot every last one of them. Sending the message to the world: "Come to America on H1B, and die."
But please note, I am not advocating any of this. I'm merely predicting it. Because throughout history, when the powerful repeatedly failed to listen to the "lower classes" complaints of injustice, eventually the lower classes kill the powerful -- And it won't matter if the powerful were "right" according to this political theory, or they were "wrong" according to that economic theory, when they're rotting in the gutter as the proles piss on their corpse.
So, if my corporation doesn't create something the customer wants, they will magically create the jobs for me to hire new employees?
Seems a bit idiotic... Hope you don't try to start your own business with that line of thinking
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." -- Frédéric Bastiat, 1848
So, if my corporation doesn't create something the customer wants, they will magically create the jobs for me to hire new employees?
Seems a bit idiotic... Hope you don't try to start your own business with that line of thinking
Being purposefully obtuse, muchacho? You can be just as right thinking tax cutting, right to work 100 percent H1-B as you like -
But tell me, how many jobs are you going to create if you have no customers?
Speaking of people who shouldn't start businesses....
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If all corporations are ...
Customers create demand but only at certain prices does that demand turn into a transaction. Ignoring the capital required to turn theoretical demand into actual demand is dumb. People who say customers create jobs have an an agenda and don't really believe that follows logically, because how could they be that dumb?
You have zero understanding of the word libertarian.
Just another day in Paradise
Let's see them act so "high & mighty" when competing power companies are built (don't even *try* to tell me it doesn't or can't happen) - then, their OWN mantra will work against them, since they will HAVE TO COMPETE ON PRICE vs. others like themselves (vs. being a monopoly).
* That happened here, with a Solvay Gas & Electric Company vs. National Grid - the former pays rates EASILY 1/2 of what the rest of us do under the latter, BUT, it keeps the former under control (vs. skyrocketing their prices, which THEY DID once they, a UK company, did once they bought out the former Niagara Mohawk - TRIPLING OUR RATES).
Under control, & for the reasons I stated above, I.E.-> Other smaller power suppliers CAN be created, @ ANY TIME, to make them feel the burn of competition (after all: "It's the AMERICAN WAY", right? RIGHT!).
APK
P.S.=> By the way, asshole: Go fuck yourself - it's pigs like you that *THINK* you "run the show" when you create monopolies - & that CAN be turned against you, EASILY, as shown above (tons would jump @ the chance to be such competing companies too, no questions asked, since it's GUARANTEED INCOME since consumers DO NEED POWER!)... apk
H1Bs aren't immigrants. They are foreign workers here to take jobs that no one wants. That's the "theory", anyway. In practice, they are used to import indentured servants at the cost of US citizens.
No, customers create the potential, or demand, for jobs to be created. Now, someone can create a company, and jobs, w/o potential and fail...there's no market. And, of course, they can fail for many other reasons. So, there's an equation to be had here for a job to be worth a shit, and yes the customers are part of it, but your statement fails to include the corporation which does in fact create the job.
Just another day in Paradise
Your first two sentences are correct; it's all about supply and demand - no need to complicate it. But your last sentence conflicts with the first two and makes no sense.
You forgot to mention that some immigrants are carriers of values that can be incompatible with values of your Founding Fathers. Yes, you understand the meaning of the word "values".
If you're going to bring history into the discussion, at least don't claim corporations were invented here. There's a long history of them prior to the United States.
Just another day in Paradise
By what logic can you make a case that you need foreign workers in the utility field, particularly when you just laid off 500?
The legal concept of a corporation has been around since at least the Roman Empire. Don't expect it to go away any time soon.
And the revolution you're predicting? There aren't any people starving.
Customers are still the job creators. Companies that lose customers shrink, and that involves lay-offs. Ask GM and Chrysler. Companies that gain customers hire. Ask Facebook and Google.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Simple solution is to change the rules of the H1B visa..... not by stopping the "skilled" immigrants but by having every visa come with residency - which would free a skilled worker to work anywhere and not just for the sponsoring company. I have personally seen the impact on wages for H1Bs because of the need to stay with the company while the company works through the process for residency (which can take the full 6 years). If they change jobs the residency process has to start again, which makes the company not having to compete in regards to wages for H1B visa holders. Competition is good, H1B to residency process depresses it and distorts the market.
Some of us have indeed freelanced and/or conslutted.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Every time I read one of these statements from the entitles poodles that run corporate America, I hear guillotines being sharpened.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...with the dismissive attitude of an authority figure who knows they can't be touched.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
With the retraining, he was able to land a new job as a "Limited Time Employee" for a major integrator and works a project in the city he lived in. His LTE work has gone on for over 3 years (kind of like a real job and it expected to last for another 3 years.
What are his benefits and medical insurance like? Yeah, thought so.
As a cancer survivor (in the US, 50% of us will be diagnosed with cancer during our working lives, and live or die based in no small part on how good our medical benefits are), I can tell you that working as a contractor with minimal or no benefits, you're playing Russian roulette with your own survival. And this is true even with ObamaCare, which is a vast improvement on what we had (or rather, didn't have) before.
This. When my grandfather came to the US, he became a CITIZEN. This isn't about making people Citizens. In fact, that's the last thing Zuck and pals want for the workers they ate shipping in from India.
do something about it, or just complain.
If any of the complainers or sympathizers have organizational ability, start a company yourselves. Jobs aren't things to be handed out. Can you do what your former company does yourselves? Can you compete? Alone, probably not. Start an association and combine your talents. Make a new company, and don't hire H1B Asians.
This site is read by thousands, it would be trivial to post a link to your place.
Opportunities are disguised as hard work
I'm very sorry, but I have to agree with the poster you reply to. This isn't as simple as you think. Yes you can create customers out of the blue. Ask Facebook, Google and many others. However, yes, without customers no business is viable, except the government.
So, the business process is rather than, find out something you believe there is a market for and customers for and create it. That is where it starts, not the reverse.
Achille Talon
Hop!
I skew liberal but one area where I have always disagreed on with most is immigration. It is clear that illegal immigrants were undercutting legit workers. However, unlike right wingers who are just content with deportation, I support prosecution of those who exploit illegal workers. Knowingly hiring illegals should result in jail time.
Customers create the jobs. If another company can undercut the price of your company, you will lose sales and employees will lose their jobs, and the other company will gain sales and hire more employees.
In the end, the customer is always right, and the customer is the one funding the ongoing business of the company. Lose too many of your customers and you go broke - see GM and Chrysler as examples.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
That is correct that their are no jobs without a demand, but the customers do not actually create anything. The business is what creates.
If you want to see how this works do the island test.
You are stuck an island by yourself and you demand a big pile of food, a bottle of rum, and a boat (so you can leave the damn island). Do any of those things spring into existence? How about if their are 2 people on the island demanding those things? No not yet? Ok how about 1 million people on that island demanding those things? And again your statement fails. You can demand anything all day long and it doesn't magically appear.
Ok let's try this again on the same island but with a guy who just happens to know how to grow food, make rum, and build boats.
He now wants a big pile of food, a bottle of rum, and a boat. So he begins growing the food, builds a still to make the rum, and chops down trees to make the boat. Let's try again with 2 people on the island. Yep food, rum, and boats are being made. How about with 1 million people. Yep food, rum, and boats are being made.
Now you could argue that the guy wouldn't have made anything without the demand, so the demand came first, but I would counter with that the business came first because the guy knew how to build those things first.
People dream all the time about things they want, but until someone actually figures out how to do it no jobs will ever be created to deliver such things
Without ongoing revenues from customers, the business is just a money sink (like a boat), and will go under, so those jobs were unsustainable. They end when investors decide to cut their loses and throw good money after bad. See many of the dot-com bombs who had no paying customers and no exit plan.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I've never been hired or paid by a customer, dipshit. And neither have you.
And if all the customers went away, because they were too poor to buy the company's product, how many jobs would the 'job creator' company be creating? Companies create jobs when there are actual *customers*, and ones that can afford their products, otherwise there's no reason to create more jobs to produce things that nobody needs/wants/can-afford, right?
That is correct that their are no jobs without a demand, but the customers do not actually create anything. The business is what creates. If you want to see how this works do the island test. You are stuck an island by yourself and you demand a big pile of food, a bottle of rum, and a boat (so you can leave the damn island). Do any of those things spring into existence? How about if their are 2 people on the island demanding those things? No not yet? Ok how about 1 million people on that island demanding those things? And again your statement fails. You can demand anything all day long and it doesn't magically appear. Ok let's try this again on the same island but with a guy who just happens to know how to grow food, make rum, and build boats. He now wants a big pile of food, a bottle of rum, and a boat. So he begins growing the food, builds a still to make the rum, and chops down trees to make the boat. Let's try again with 2 people on the island. Yep food, rum, and boats are being made. How about with 1 million people. Yep food, rum, and boats are being made. Now you could argue that the guy wouldn't have made anything without the demand, so the demand came first, but I would counter with that the business came first because the guy knew how to build those things first. People dream all the time about things they want, but until someone actually figures out how to do it no jobs will ever be created to deliver such things
You spent 100 years taking over US politics - yes, we're aware of that now. To bad "we the people" weren't aware of it twenty or more years ago. NAFTA should have been the real giveaway, but people had their heads in the sand.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Even many staunch union supporters would agree that giving workers more power than employers is a bad idea.
They may say that, but I've never heard of any that believe it.
I recall from a survey a while about about 75% of Slashdot readers are leftists. The same lefists who are extremely pro-immigration and talk about how immigration enriches our society and benefits everyone.
One thing you need to learn about leftists is that they accuse others of what they are secretly guilty of, or would be guilty of if only they had the chance. Here they quickly accuse others ("evil corporations") of being greedy, but its their own greed thats on the table. They are dismayed that a corporation capable of replacing them with cheaper workers goes ahead and does so. Never does it cross their mind that they are overpaid.
Ultimately they think only of themselves. That whole leftist thing they champion is itself just a self-serving script. They can easily feel good about themselves so long as its not them thats getting hurt by their ideas. When challenged to put their money where their mouth is, they are immediately and viciously up in arms about it. How dare those evil corporations bring in cheap labor for their jobs.
Disclaimer: Most of the people I work with are from other nations, and quite a few dont speak any english. They have all come to the Capitalist United States for a better life, but not always for the same reasons. A few are Egyptians that fled their country because they are also Christians. Many are Chinese that would otherwise be subsistence farming. A fairly large group of South Americans from both Brazil and Puru. We've also got Haitians, Jamaicans, and Dominicans. We have lost of few Ukrainians because they have gone back home to fight against the Russians. We have Indians too (with the dot and with the feathers) as well as Pakistanis and Iranians.
We've got liberals and conservatives, but not fucking leftists. We unionized but thats not leftism, just real liberalism. One of the problem with the so called liberals of silicon valley is that they are actually pretty fucking weak on the real liberalism stuff:
Liberty.
The silicon valley liberal doesn't really care much for others peoples liberty if it doesn't go along with their self-serving sound bites or worse their greed.
"His name was James Damore."
And without corporations there are no jobs. You're still failing to see that it's not just about customers. You can have plenty of customers and demand, and still have no jobs.
Just another day in Paradise
wow really?
So all those non-profit charity corporations have no employees or jobs, huh?
All those startups that grow and consume ever larger amounts of cash without one customer don't have any employees either?
How do communist countries even have the concept of a job when they don't have the concept of a "customer".
Are you sure that's air your breathing?
Not true at all - In a virtual environment it's entirely possible to serve millions or dozens of customers without ever changing employee levels - like a self-published book author.
For that matter, facebook doesn't have "customers".. Have YOU paid for your facebook usage recently?
Historically, small businesses create more jobs than any corporation does. Mom and pop businesses. Family businesses. Local cooperatives. Some individual who sticks his neck out - and entrepreneur. Young companies create jobs - older, more established businesses do not.
http://www.sbecouncil.org/abou...
http://smallbusiness.house.gov...
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/ar...
http://www.nber.org/digest/feb...
Of at least equal importance, is the question of WHEN do businesses create jobs?
Small businesses, new businesses, and startups create jobs all the time. Large corporations instead only "create" jobs in times of plenty. That is - they stand back, and watch the small players take the risks. When they see little guys making a go of it, then they either buy out the little guy, or go directly into competition with that little guy.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Even many staunch union supporters would agree that giving workers more power than employers is a bad idea.
Why? If the workers are supposed to just smile and take it when they get laid off, and get another job, why shouldn't the same be true of businesses? If the workers had more power and used it unwisely the company would just go bust, and the owner would have to get another job, which is how free market capitalism is supposed to work... How is that different?
In fact, with powerful unions comes a more responsible work force, not less. If everyone's job is at stake, then you have to tread carefully. Otherwise, how could we in northern Europe have large multinational companies when we have some of the strongest unions in the world? Our current PM was a former top union boss, and lo and behold, there wasn't any mass flight of Sandvikens and SAABs...
Stefan Axelsson
You are either seriously uneducated, indoctrinated, or maliciously motivated. Contract power between two groups is the most serious issue that exists in politics, economics and even socialization. It's why we don't let people fuck kids, fire unionizers, discriminate against minorities, or violate human rights. Just look at the struggle between Netflix and Comcast. Comcast was certainly happy to abuse it's power and they are rightfully hated for it.
The fact is, employers and companies have a lot of power over people and we NEED regulations to defend ourselves either at the top or the bottom. We need to have balanced power between all stakeholders or someone will be abused as soon as the group in power can justify it (to themselves, not to others).
Yes, I have paid them, in access to my personal information.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Basic supply and demand. Who creates the job the person who creates a better mouse trap, or the demand for the better mouse trap? Quite easy to answer. Without the demand for a better mouse trap the person who invented it would never have spent time to invent it.
Facebook did not create new customers, the customers were there, demanding better ways to communicate.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You realize, of course, that FWD.us is a decidedly "leftist" organization?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It's obvious that you ARE indoctrinated.
The simplest most powerful contract between two groups is saying "NO".
Comcast, AT&T and Edison don't have power because of lack of regulations. They have ALL the power BECAUSE of regulations established by corporations AND union groups (you're aware that all these shops have unions in them, right?) that conspired together to protect their personal monopolies to increase that power you oh-so despise.
I worked at AT&T and the union there couldn't give one iota about employee abuses at the IT levels as we were sold out to H1Bs and cheaper levels... unless, of course, we wanted to join the union, pay the dues and submit to their power controls for our personal AND political lives. Meanwhile they happily organized government call in days to push for legislation that gave more money to AT&T - BTW, such call ins were mandatory and required signing a sheet verifying you had called.
So you'll excuse me if I call your opinion bullshit.
The countriest with the strongest unions are those in the deepest trouble (Greece, France, Italy). The UK only recovered in the 1980s and 1990s after Margaret Thatcher's government broke the power of the unions that made running a company efficiently impossible.
A buisness does not create, people do.
If you are on an island and demand things then you do it, because you want to survive. No business is there, but demand, and the job to create those things, exist. If someone who already knows how to do those things is on the island he will just do it more efficiently, and can make more money at it, but he did not create the job..
Lets do your same test. You are on an island full of nothing but farmers, and only need to grow one crop that only takes one person to create and everyone is equally good at making that crop. Is there anymore jobs for farmers? No, because demand=jobs. Add one non farmer to the mix, now there is demand for farmers, and he will pay the farmer who can best serve his needs the cheapest. He created the job.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
A buisness does not create, people do.
If you are on an island and demand things then you do it, because you want to survive. No business is there, but demand, and the job to create those things, exist. If someone who already knows how to do those things is on the island he will just do it more efficiently, and can make more money at it, but he did not create the job..
Lets do your same test. You are on an island full of nothing but farmers, and only need to grow one crop that only takes one person to create and everyone is equally good at making that crop. Is there anymore jobs for farmers? No, because demand=jobs. Add one non farmer to the mix, now there is demand for farmers, and he will pay the farmer who can best serve his needs the cheapest. He created the job
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You did read that they had to train their replacements right? So their resume was good, the offshore peoples was not.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Here's an easy solution to this problem. Make H1-B a path to citizenship (and really we want as much intelligent and highly-skilled labors as possible to stick around) so that eventually companies can't hold the H1-B over an employee's head to keep wages down. Next, keep track of former H1-B workers who are currently unemployed and do not allow for any addition applications until there there are fewer than say 10% who have been unemployed for more than a year. Additionally, count any citizens who were displaced by an H1-B worker (would need to follow companies using H1-B workers more closely, but that's part of the trade-off) as part of this pool as well.
If a company can't find enough skilled workers, they need to raise wages to attract better candidates and let the companies who aren't willing to pay as much draw from the pool of applicants who are less qualified. Otherwise they can pick from what's available and spend some time training their hires.
We need to grow a pool of potential jurors who are willing to employ nullification in trials where violence was used against whomever benefited from H1b. Plain and simple.
> See many of the dot-com bombs who had no paying customers and no exit plan.
And still created jobs.
es you can create customers out of the blue. Ask Facebook, Google and many others.
The people who use facebook and google are NOT the customers, they are the PRODUCT.
Require all employers who hire an H1-B to pay TOP MARKET RATE for their region for the position they hire that person for.Additionally, require the employer initiate and cover all costs of Naturalization of the H1-B employee after 1 year or rescind H1-B status and send them home. A per worker fee that is large enough to cover teh cost of oversight should be required for each H1-B worker hired. This could be handled through ICE -- the same as they handle Green Card Applicants -- just perform random interviews and checks on the H1-B workers to ensure they are indeed working in the job capacity they were documented as and are indeed receiving the appropriate level of pay. Deviation should result in hefty fines the first time ($100,000 or more per incident) with severe penalties after repeated incidents ($1,000,000+ fines and revocation of all H1-B permits and inability to obtain future permits)
This way, we can be sure H1-Bs will indeed be a highly skilled and specialized worker hired because there is no local equivalent and that the H1-B worker is not exploited as a cheap labor source and given all employee accommodations as required under law.
Markets by nature work themselves into states of stability. Stability is where a single player or a small group of players provides a product at a price the buyer can afford. The problem is that this stability is also stagnant, and does not create innovation.
So true competitive markets do not exist for very long unless there is an entity I place that keeps the market from reaching stability. In most cases, that entity is government regulation that either controls the big players or allows room for small players to enter the market.
people can make things and sell them to each other without corporations, they are strictly a mental construct humans use to organize their thinking, in the physical realm corporations do not actually exist.
the customers do not actually create anything.
let's try this exercise: you are a farmer and you have extra food. there are hungry people with money. no corpoation is necessary for a business transaction to take place here.
You are stuck an island by yourself
yeah sure that argument clearly is deeply rooted in real life experience, NOT
never underestimate the power of the straw man
the straw man can have infinite power or wisdom or he may be the stupidest person on earth
such is the power and glory of the straw man
These guys are jerks
Say what you want, boy
They have the money
They have the influence
They have the connection
What have you?
You call them 'jerks' not because they are real jerks. You call them 'jerks' because you are jealous of what they have and who they know
If you are on their shoes I bet you will do the same thing ... or some thing that may be even worse!
We all know that the congress critters who will be more than glad to sell out the nation as long as the price is right
Oh, don't call those fucking congress critters 'jerks', though ... if it is not because you, and yes, I mean YOU, the Americans, those fuckers won't get elected in the first place
Lemme put it another way ... the buck should stop with you, the American Voters. It is because REAL jerks like you voted to put fuckers in the congress, fuckers who will sell out the nation as long as the price is right
YOU GUYS ARE THE ONE WHO HAVE STARTED ALL THESE!
the founding fathers said that their beliefs are compatible with all people so maybe you can explain some more about how your theory works
You didn't pay squat - you gave it.
Might as well say you're a customer of a blood drive.
You're not Facebook's customer, you're a Facebook user. The customers are the ad and marketing guys.
One thing you need to learn about leftists is that they accuse others of what they are secretly guilty of, or would be guilty of if only they had the chance.
straw man alert!
Here they quickly accuse others ("evil corporations") of being greedy, but its their own greed thats on the table.
yes, when the corporation doles out enormous golden parachutes to its executives, it is doing the exact same thing as when a father scrapes together food to feed his family
they were not "jobs" because they did not last. "jobs" are what people use to raise families and children. getting paid for six weeks and then getting laid off is not a "job"
It's not about being handed shit on a silver platter, asshole. It's about a level playing field. Fuckers like Zuck lobby the government to tilt the playing field in their favour, and then call everyone else "whiners" when they start realizing they're getting screwed and speak out against it.
The people of the USA, Canada, and any other country that is pulling this shit need to stand up to their government and let it be known that the government only exists with the consent of the governed. That the government exists for the benefit of the people, not a handful of rich fucks who think they are entitled to more justice and political representation than another citizen of the country.
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm
For CEO bullshitters to make 3000x the wage of their AVERAGE worker - figure's close enough from what I read, & in the 1970's, that figure was FAR LOWER, like 30x only (not lowest paid mind you, but AVERAGE)? That's "efficiency"??
No asshole. It's highway robbery!
Those in executive positions like to spout "we have responsibilities" & THOSE? LMAO - they're NO DIFFERENT than running your OWN finances... I know, 1st hand, from running my OWN BUSINESS (since I finally got smart & decided to make monies for myself vs. being paid peanuts for efforts that made those crooks millions, & they couldn't do it themselves either, & used guys like me to do it for them): RUNNING A BUSINESS IS NO DIFFERENT - you make the same decisions in YOUR OWN LIVES daily. You have X dollars, you have X dollars in bills etc. - you're making the SAME TYPES OF DECISIONS as a person (& since a corporation is considered a person in a court of law, that only makes further sense)... no different @ all - & either you make PRUDENT + sound ones, or you go bust.
* Those horseshitters have raised their pay to unbelievable levels, & I know, just like anybody else, they are NOT worth it, no way... stockholders should WAKE THE FUCK UP & realize they're paying undereducated babysitters (most of the time, ones like AMD's CEO are an exception, in Mr. Hector Ruiz, who is @ least QUALIFIED to run those he works with as his technical subordinates since he is an EE iirc & knows his stuff @ least - MOST? Don't... & are just rich boys who joined another frat to get where they are (e.g. masons)).
Nobody's going to tell me differently - I've "been there, done that" on all those levels & know the REAL deal... The USA has been ROBBED BLIND by "their kind" (scumbags & thugs in suits - no better than street criminals operating in packs + conmen).
APK
P.S.=> Wake up America... wake up... Yes, gov't owned businesses worldwide were shown as loss makers (e.g. British Steel, since you bring up Thatcher) - so capitalism has merits along with FREE MARKETS, however, they only REALLY RUN RIGHT when gov't acts as a FAIR referee, but you can't HAVE that, not when "Big KORPORATE AMERIKA" dollars put their puppets there into place, backing BOTH "so-called parties" (same thing on both sides, owned by same owners, just different names - look @ their campaign contributions & see them "hedging their bets" like box betting a horse race) & using the "revolving door" like Cheney did going into politics when the rules needed rewriting in corporate interests' favor, & then going back out into corporate america again, reaping the ill-gotten cheated gains in 'rewards' doing so (never having to give up his interests in Haliburton either, profiting by war via it also, on "no-bid" contracts too)... apk
Germany has historically had extremely strong unions, and their economy is doing just fine. It isn't unionization that screws up economies, it's having overly-generous government pension programs (with people retiring in their 40s or whatever it was in Greece), too much business going on under-the-table and no taxes being paid on it (a huge problem in Greece), and people not doing much productive work in general (another big problem in Greece, where it seems most people work for the government, and the rest working in tourism, and no real industry to speak of; when was the last time you bought something that said "Made in Greece"? I think they make some cheese, and that's all I can think of.).
Knowing how to do something, in the absence of customers willing to pay for it, doesn't create jobs. Do your island test this way - he's alone on the island, he knows how to make boats and canoes and airplanes. Who's he going to sell to once he's made enough to satisfy his own demand?
Knowing how to do something, even with customers, is not by itself sufficient to create a job. I might know how to make a nuclear weapon - that doesn't mean I'm going to have any customers absent a supply of yellow cake; not only that, but the people who would want to buy one are the people who will make sure they're your last customer, so your "business" is closed due to a "death in the family."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Margaret Thatcher's government broke the power of the unions that made running a company efficiently impossible.
Margeret Thatcher is the only first world country former leader I'm aware of whose death prompted widespread street parties. She is one of the most despised women in history, for the poverty she brought to many of her own people.
Where did you get that idea?
FWD.us is a corporatist organization; its whole raison d'etre is to promote open borders so that corporations can get access to the cheapest workers possible.
True leftists, historically, have usually been in favor of worker protections, unionization, things like that.
It is interesting, however, that today's Democrat Party, which claims to be on "the left", has actually been working against such things in recent years.
Worse, the H1Bs require their employer to sponsor them to remain in the United States, which they will only do if the individual is working for them.
As a result, the employer not only holds and H1B's livelihood under a Damocles Sword, but even their residence in this country. You want to quit? Well, I hope you're prepared to move yourself back to where you came from on your own dime, which is also what happens if we fire you.
So, the employer has even more power over H1B workers, to the point where the worker is unlikely to report anything but the worst abuse...
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
If you have customers and demand, you now have a job. You may even be able to hire others to work with you. No corporation is needed.
There are plenty of people who take work on as contractors to mow lawns, dig wells and ditches, and do other work, without the need of a corporation. In fact, being incorporated can be detrimental to attempts to obtain bank loans for start-ups - the banks want personal skin in the game, not some limited liability company.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
They were a necessary evil to help production ramp up during a civil war, and to help extend the railroads. They had a legally limited charter to be dismantled immediately after their scope was completed. After the civil war, in the first year of the 16th Amendment had about 289 court cases around it. More than 90% were by corporations altering their charters and extending their powers.
A "job" is any activity in which you're paid for work.
But I'll be sure to pass that on to my buddies in the housing industry that only work for several months at a time or my other friends who work as musicians "Hey, do you know you don't have a job because you're only employed for several weeks at a stretch?"
The non-profits and charities still have customers - the donors. The recipients of charity are not customers - even if today we are polite enough to call them "clients". Same as the customers of google are advertisers, whereas users are not - they're product.
Those startups that grow by injections of cash have customers - the people who supply the cash in return for an equity stake.
Communists have the concept of "customer."
You need to get out more.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Facebook has customers - their advertisers.
An author who can't sell their book to a single person is not in business, doesn't matter if it's the virtual world or the real world. So that author better have a job doing something else, or be retired.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The clients of those dot-bombs had were the investors, who exchanged their money for equity. Once they ran out of investor clients, if they couldn't attract any other customers, the jobs went bye-bye.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Facebook's customers are the corporations and people that advertise on Facebook.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
So how is it that we allow foreigners to come in and work jobs with this kind of access? You want a few hundred ISIS operatives to cross the border? No problem arranging the border sensor grid outage.
Have gnu, will travel.
If a single commenter mentioned this, I didn't see it. The entity employing H1B workers is required by law to file a Labor Condition Application to ensure that they meet or exceed the prevailing wage, and an attestation designed to ensure that they are not used to break a strike nor to replace citizen workers - i.e., that the H1Bs are really needed because citizens cannot be found to do the jobs.
Obviously this does not work, or there would be little to no motivation to gratuitously replace citizens with H1B workers. What no one has satisfactorily explained to me (beyond waving the hands and mumbling "corruption") is, how is the law being flouted?
No, they are the free labor which creates the content which attracts the eyeballs.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
into the ideals that were pounded into his skull since childhood. That's the problem. The free market has failed us middle class techs. We can't possibly compete with people who lack food security. Yes, the H1-B program increases the GDP, but that's useless to the middle class since we're getting a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. The solution is protectionism and socialism, but the 1% have spent our whole lives demonizing these things.
/.ers is fighting the same uphill battle. It's the same reason the right wing just won the UK. You take control of the basic discussion and thought processes. Hell, look what we're doing. We're not talking about our standard of living, we're talking about "Job Creators". They've framed the debate in such a way that we can't even start to talk about the real issues.
Ask yourself what your high school economics class was like. Were you ever taught there was any way but free market laissez faire economics? Heck, in my class they didn't even bother demonizing it, it just wasn't taught. Libertarianism was a fait accompli. The grandparent, like a lot of
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Another point is that cheating is rampant in some other countries universities. Take India for instance. Wealthy students bribe the professors. Poorer students feel that it is their right to cheat to compete with the richer students.
It doesn't change the fact that they created jobs on a long term gamble that demand could be created. You can tap dance around that all you want but I worked for several of those companies and made a good chunk of income from them for several years at a time as well as contributing that in increased tax dollars to the government.
as for jobs going "bye-bye" - I don't see the difference between them and Edison here (a successful and established company, with customers) making jobs go "bye-bye" for cost cutting measures.
Worse, the H1Bs require their employer to sponsor them to remain in the United States, which they will only do if the individual is working for them.
...
So, the employer has even more power over H1B workers, to the point where the worker is unlikely to report anything but the worst abuse...
The company I work for hires lots of H1B workers. It also works everybody very hard, and I don't think that's a coincidence. I don't think it's generally possible to advance much within the company while maintaining a healthy work/life balance, but I stay for now because I've grown rather fond of eating. I doubt that the company could get away with pushing the employees so hard if a large percentage of them didn't face deportation for complaining.
I've seen the worst abuse happen, and reporting it didn't result in any visible punishment to the abuser in question (who was later promoted). That strongly suggests to me that the company at least tacitly approves of the abuse, despite making noise about work/life balance in the company propaganda. I'm fortunate to be in a group where I'm somewhat shielded from the worst abuse, but it's still draining to see it going on in the same building.
Posting anonymously and not naming the company for obvious reasons, but you've almost certainly heard of them, and probably own their products. I'm a natural-born citizen, but I could easily be replaced by a younger H1B who is willing to have no life outside of work. I can't argue that the company culture doesn't work, given the staggeringly large annual revenue, but it does come at a human cost that bothers me.
You're missing the fact that the company did have customers - the people who put up the money for equity. You know, shareholders (literally, owners of a share of the company)?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
A bunch of CEOs and their deep-pocketed investors want to increase their profits by driving down the cost of labor and want to do that by bringing in (basically) lower-wage indentured servants.
Call me when there's some real news on this front.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Nice deflection -
The point was that one author who has millions of customers from sales of a book doesn't have to increase the number of employees.
And sure Facebook has customers - but the ad agencies and marketers are a fixed market with a relatively unchanging number of advertising "customers" - Their job creation numbers aren't tied to "customer count".
The metric you're looking here for is # of employees needed to establish an income level.
The book author doesn't need employees to increase income.
Facebook may have to increase employees (or not) to increase income and profit but that doesn't necessarily have to come from more customers - it could come from even FEWER customers who want to pay more for better quality services.
That's why Edison is switching to H1Bs and the unions (and Edison has them) have to go along with it because California has strict government regulations (your favorite thing!) to control price and environmental impact. Raw costs of energy production are going up and the unions will have to make conciliatory gestures like price/benefit cuts or, throw out the non-union sacrificial IT workers to make up the losses.
And Zuckerburg is leading the charge in concert with the same government people wanting to push more regulations in tandem with the unions who are getting kickbacks from those same politicians.
While there is a proper definition of the term "libertarian", most slashdotters who identify as such do not understand it. Indeed, the same can be said for most anyone who self-identifies as "libertarian". Most would seem to fall into the "I should be able to get rich at others expense and smoke weed" camp. Then there are the Rand fanboys who still believe that labor is a "free market". I don't know which group is more self-deluded but they are both out of touch with reality.
Nope. The unions in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and, to a lesser extent, Norway, for example, are much stronger than the unions in the countries you mentioned. As far as Europe is concerned the countries you mention are on the lower half when it comes to union strength. (Which is clear if you notice the antics they get up to. A strong union wouldn't have to behave like that.)
So, no cigarr. Try again.
Stefan Axelsson
Customers create demand but only at certain prices does that demand turn into a transaction. Ignoring the capital required to turn theoretical demand into actual demand is dumb. People who say customers create jobs have an an agenda and don't really believe that follows logically, because how could they be that dumb?
Wow. You flunked Econ 101, didn't you? You've left out a couple of critical factors in your sophomoric analysis here.
Which communist countries haven't had the idea of a customer?
The investors were not "customers" - they were INVESTORS.
A customer is one who uses the product or services produced.
An investor is one who puts up support for a company to help produce goods or services with the intention that they'll be paid back or sometimes NOT AT ALL (for tax purposes or just to help a fella out).
Germany has even stronger unions and is doing very well. Margaret Thatcher handed the UK economy over to bankers and we saw how well that turned out in 2008.
Capitalists have been bringing in low paid coolies for centuries. Nothing new here.
Don't make the mistake of thinking these coolies are somehow superior - other than their willingness to work for pennies on the dollar.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
AC wasn't claiming corps were an American invention. I believe he/she was referring to the legal concept in American law.
Given current business practices in the US, the rational thing to do is train your replacements incorrectly, but in such a way as their lack of training is only noticeable after you are fired, or long enough after the training has taken place that it can't be tracked down to your specific instruction.
When the geek turns to thoughts felonies he contrives schemes so finely calibrated that they cannot possibly work.
Communist counstries are centralized planned economies.
Your so-called arguments about "customers" increasing jobs don't apply because the communist countries will determine the supply AND demand AND what businesses exist.
And I'll point out that Communists only have the concept of "customer" because they've come to understand that capitalism WORKS.
He didn't say corporations were invented in the U.S., he said "Corporations in the U.S." are a "legal invention" of the U.S. Just like corporations in Iceland would be legal inventions of Iceland.
It seems that trying to be specific enough to avoid the usual /. pedantic nitpicking just gets you a different kind of nitpicking -- the kind where what was written is misunderstood.
No point in trying to communicate at all, here, really, anymore.
Facebook is continually trying to increase the number of advertisers - their customers. And an author of a book is no different than an author of software - the cost of producing the first copy is high in terms of time and labor, each additional copy is almost nothing. But, in both cases, if nobody is a customer, they haven't created a job for themselves, just a hobby. Same as all those devs who work for free on open source don't have a job developing open source.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Investors are most definitely customers - that's why companies do "dog and pony shows" for potential investors - they want to sell those investors on the value of the company so that the investor will buy a share of the company.
That they buy a share in the hope of it increasing in value is no different than someone buying a hammer so they can increase their value as a carpenter. Or someone buying a house as part of their long-term investment plan because they expect to sell it at a profit instead of renting.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Corporations are shortsighted dumb asses and the question is how are they going to make any $$$ if Americans will no longer have any type of job or income? U.S needs to start bringing back some rules and regulations including cutting the tax loop holes and if U.S corporations continue to hide their $$$ overseas from the tax man they should be shut down or their patents voided or forced out of the country and hopefully it would give rise to newer businesses.
The governments of capitalist countries also determine both the demand and who is going to be allowed to bid on supplying it - see arms procurement as just one example. Does that make them communist?
Tender bids for construction contracts also lay out both the demand and the businesses that are qualified to bid for it, even if it ends up with only one bidder being qualified. Does that make them communist?
Businesses enter into single-source contracts, and single-buyer contracts. Are they communist?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Facebook definitely does have customers. They are called 'advertisers'. And they do pay. Lots.
Ala, automation at Amazon.
So if I start my own company with my own money then, by your own loose definitions, I'm a customer because I've sold myself on the idea.
Let's just generalize it to where you want this argument to go then -
Money makes jobs and without money there are no jobs.
Ergo - What Zuckerburg and Edison are doing here is correct because this will make MORE jobs because they will have more money with which to be customers with to create new jobs with.
A Libertarian thinks it sounds cooler to say they are that than Republican. Especially since Bush.
Why would a corporation create any jobs? You are trying to wave your hand over the answer to that question.
It is the exact same argument when talking about lowering taxes on rich people because they are benevolent and will use the extra money to create jobs. This has been proven again and again not to be the case.
Henry Ford understood this, pay your workers enough to afford the product they make and you will build a society that is better for everyone. Ben and Jerry also understood this, they believe corporations have a responsibility to contribute back to society that supports them through their patronage. In response they got loyal customers and dairy farmers lining up to work with them. They made lots and lots of money as a result.
Many of the leaders of top corporations these days have lot sight of this simple fact. They think if they squeeze the poor and decimate the middle class that they will continue to be rich. They will of course be right, they would however have far more money if there was a strong middle class that could afford to buy their products.
Without customers and demand for a product there is no reason for any company to hire anybody. When a company grows they get big enough to need a full time HR person. At a certain size they'll need a full time accountant, and a certain size they'll want an IT guy. When they grow so big the IT guy can't keep up they'll hire another IT guy provided they are continuing to grow. They can only grow if their product is selling and they are making money.
Historically, small businesses create more jobs than any corporation does. Mom and pop businesses. Family businesses. Local cooperatives. Some individual who sticks his neck out - and entrepreneur. Young companies create jobs - older, more established businesses do not.
A lot of it can be attributed to statistical effects. Lets say, we make the cut-off between a small or medium business and a big corporation at 500 employees. Companies will cross this line all the time. Some grow larger than 500 employees, others shrink until they are below 500 employees, or they go bust and fire more than 500 employees. In all those cases of crossing the 500-employees-line, it will always be a small or medium company adding jobs and a large corporation slashing jobs. That's built into the definition! So in your statistics, you will see small companies adding jobs and large companies slashing jobs - but that's because you define small and large companies in a way that this result is inevitable. It has nothing to do with the potential of an individual company to add or to slash jobs.
So your complaint about AT&T's union is you wanted the collective benefits of the union but did not want to pay into them. Ah, the libertarian creed, wanting benefits of institutions without contributing.
Facebook and Google's customers are the advertisers on the site, you don't pay because you are the product. As long as they have products they will have customers, if they lose those customers they will eventually shrink, if they add customers they will grow as needed.
The left/right dichotomy shouldn't apply in this situation. These are corporation out for money. The tech companies may support liberal causes (and that might help them in the press), but in the end they want to make money.
I'm right-wing. You don't have to convince me that importing cheap labor to replace American workers is a bad thing. My solution is different than some of the liberal/tarians around here though: end the H1-B visa program entirely.
Same with illegal immigration. It hurts American workers. Just end it entirely. (The optimal strategy might be to arrest their employers rather then the illegal immigrant. Sooner or later those assholes will it get through their heads to hire legal residents. The illegal immigrants will have no choice to return home once the jobs dry up.)
I should probably mention that there other issues like Comcast that you could right-wing populists on your side (there are the right-wing corporate whores, but, hey, we see left-wing corporate whores in the tech sector). The argument should be focused on the market and less on ad hominems ("because Republicans!").
I gave something in exchange for something else, that is pretty much the definition of paid.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Facebook is a middleman for a product. The product is user information, offered by users for sale. Facebook pays their users by providing a service that many of them find useful. There's a trade; if it's a one-sided donation on the user's part, then they got screwed (like in a blood drive, where it's a donation, instead of a trade). If Facebook doesn't provide useful services for trade, then the users will take their product elsewhere.
Of course Facebook translates information into money by analyzing it and selling information to advertisers, so advertisers are the first Facebook customers that actually trade money for a product. So, the users and the ad guys are both customers, just in different senses.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Really? Then what's going on if someone pays me money to mow their lawn? In that case, they're the customer. They hired me, and they're going to pay me for my work. Ditto if I'm doing maintenance on their computer, or something. I've done both. So, in what way does that mean that I haven't been hired+paid by a customer?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
That's because the U.S. Democratic party is not a left-wing party, it's merely to the left of its only viable opposition at this point. In practice it is much more of a Centrist or Center-Right party, from a European standpoint.
Well, that's a fully thought-out and well argued riposte to a joke. I'm guessing you're a libertarian - Sucks when the chickens come home to roost, doesn't it?
You don't want unions. You don't want government intervention. You think the market will sort it all out, and that it will allow the best to rise to the top. It's never worked, and it never will, but that doesn't stop you. I bet your tiny fists are clenched in rage right now at just how wrong I am about everything, but what's really killing you is just how wrong reality is. It just doesn't conform to your perfect little model where everyone is a sociopath, does it? Yet on you desperately cling to that perfect market system, that belief that collective bargaining is bad, that you just have to work harder, be smarter than the other guy to succeed. And you /are/ smarter, and you /do/ work harder, yet you lost your job to an H1B and you aren't making it, yet talentless lazy morons seem to get ahead in life. If only the world were more libertarian, the government less involved, the market less regulated it would just work, you know it so deep in your soul that it can't be questioned, no matter much moving towards your ideal system only serves to screw you over, how often removing regulations leads to american job losses, and how much those unionized, government interfered-with 8-weeks vacation a year, universal healthcare having germans are proving you wrong.
Libertarianism isn't a science, or even a philosophy, it's a desperate cult, the high priests filling their coffers from the shakedowns of the true believers and the tithe they can impose on us all as a result. It makes sense, like the world being flat makes sense, and the uniformity of the passage of time, not like that counter-intuititive socialism with its round world, and relativity of reference frame. No matter what you see happen, no matter how far you fall, you never give up that base knowledge that it is you who is right, and reality that is wrong.
Yes, I understand the word libertarian, better than you might think. The question really is, do you understand it yourself?
I'm not exactly sure how the centre-right Democratic Party is considered 'leftist', but I guess that's America for you...
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
What's the matter? Haven't you heard about the new economy where everyone is a consultant? Corporations don't create local jobs. Only consultants do.
by the neck until dead (after arrest for economic treason and conviction in a court of law).
posting at http://leftistconservative.blogspot.com
Exactly.
Here in America, most people consider Democrats to be "leftists".
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha aha has ooooh, good one. A company creates jobs as a consequence of organizing scarce resources in such a way that somebody becomes a paying customer while before that organization the customer did not exist. A person that never saw a car in his life may be an obvious client for somebody offering him a stronger horse, but he is not a client to a car company. A car company has to invest, hire and produce first, before the first buyer buys anything at all, the company already spent money, hired people and built the product.
Why don't you add "you didn't build that", while you are at it?
You can't handle the truth.
An employee loses a job, finds another one. Sure, he may have some difficult time in between. However he can just walk away and there is nothing the employer can do about it. I want to be able to sue employees for just walking away as they do sometimes. If I lose money as a company I want the employee to share in the pain of the financial loss. If a client doesn't pay for the work I want not to pay the employee who I hired to do the work. I can be sued as a business, I want to split the damages so that the employees also bear some reponsibility.
Oh, I can't really do any of that. The fucked up society cares to protect the employees much more than employers. In fact laws, lawsuits, regulations take away my individual rights as an employer but employees still have those and they get entitlements to demand things from me that go beyond what I am willing to offer.
Employees do not have the headache of obligations imposed by the oppressive violent government structures that employers have.
I am firmly on the side of individual rights, and this means I am firmly on the side that if a person becomes an employer they must not lose those rights.
Why oh why does it happen so that a group representing the majority of people in a so called democracy get more rights than a minority, employers. Can it be that democracy is really a system of the mob ganging up against a minority? Hmmm.
You can't handle the truth.
This is in fact the way open capitalism is supposed to work. Businesses are supposed to fail every day and there are new ones to take their place. They are not supposed to be so protected that they become mammoths that will cause a disaster if they fail, as they are today.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
"A Libertarian thinks it sounds cooler to say they are that than Fascist".
Fixed that for you.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yes, every time I buy a product I have to pay for the marketing. You don't understand accounting or proper pricing.
By the way. I don't live in a virtual world. Sooner or later I will have to buy a tangible item. That is the fallacy of the 'Information Society".
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
No you *do* pay. Every time you buy something you pay for the marketing.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Money is only a medium of exchange - it does not in and of itself create jobs. Otherwise all that money sitting in banks doing nothing would create jobs "magically." When the corporations cut back on payroll, there's less consumer activity since there's less ability for people to exchange goods and services - much of which takes place based on credit, which is not money, btw.
Generalizations ignore reality.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Straw man alert!
The union was and is corrupt and doesn't care about protecting the workers. It only cares about ensuring that its leadership and organization are paid and sustained.
Of course that's the socialist creed now isn't it? Lie and bully your way into power all the while claiming you're protecting the downtrodden people... For a price.
Seriously, the H1-B is about companies being able to control the price. IOW, it is a local communist approach. All competition disappears.
With green cards, the employee is free to move around, and as such, they can find the best companies to work for.
That is how we get REAL competition.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Customers are the job creators.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I've never been hired or paid by a customer, dipshit. And neither have you.
You remind me of a protester I saw once that had a sign that read: "Who needs oil, I take the bus!"
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
With out the government propping him up and holding his hand. Any company that needs government help is a poorly run company. He's just a welfare bum.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
No, Facebook is trying to increase its income - if it can do that with one customer easier than many it'll do that instead.
You're also changing the argument - YOUR argument was that customers increase jobs - my point was that's not true because a lone author or coder can sell to millions of customers without ever adding one job.
And you've basically proven me correct.
BTW There are many open source coders that don't get paid for their work that consider it their actual job and would be insulted that you don't consider that work worthwhile.
Socialism and Protectionism are _not_ easy answers. That's what makes them real answers. Real answers are _hard_. We're facing a lot of complex problems with a large and incredibly powerful group of individuals trying to sabotage any attempt to solve them.
This is always been a problem of socialists. Our rhetoric sucks because we don't have a grand ideal to lean on. It's so much _easier_ to say if we leave things alone their sort themselves out. It _sounds_ better and it _feels_ better. Sure, it's wrong. But it's a tough sell.
It's like when you were a teenager and didn't want to listen to your parents. I mean that exactly. Your parents weren't right about everything, but if you're middle class enough to be reading this they were probably right about 90%. But nobody remembers that 90%, just the 10% of the time they were wrong. Socialism has the same problem.
And no, Russia and China aren't socialists. Next question please. It takes more than words to be socialist, just like it takes more than sex to be a parent.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
um the government in a capitalist country is a customer and doesn't control the market as a whole as Ina communist economy.
But nice straw man you got there.
Inhale that funky Zuckersnatch
You're not Facebook's customer, you're a Facebook user. The customers are the ad and marketing guys.
So basically the reason you don't know what you're talking about in this thread is your recursion depth is set to 1.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
When's the last time you opened a product labeled "Made in one of those four countries"? Yeah, that's what I thought. Seriously, there needs to be a meme or something that eliminates whatever argument someone made, if the only counter-argument is "it works in 100% white countries where everyone agrees on everything and the population is less than most US states". In 20 years demographic trends will be very, very different in these countries and we may be able to have a sane conversation about these issues, after diversity has been achieved.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"A liberal has no arguments, only strawman fallacies"
Fixed that for you.
The first thing they should do is to abolish the random lottery for H1B visas and grant the visas within the cap to the applicants with the highest salaries. That would help to stop companies that are abusing H1Bs for driving wages down and at the same time would make sure that if a company really really needs the skills of a specific foreigner, they could get a visa for him or her by paying a very high wage.
Jan
If it's not as simple as he thought, why did you oversimplify the idea into a talking point? He was talking about the entire debate being framed by the "job creators" and you went right in line within that frame, as if there was no frame at all. You are aware of the concept of "framing the issue" I hope.
When's the last time you opened a product labeled "Made in one of those four countries"?
Probably not too long ago. Check out Volvo cars (built in Sweden) or Volvo trucks (built in Sweden, and Swedish owned). To just name two. There are many others.
Now of course, we've been non white for the last 30 years or so. Still going strong. If you lot would just stop starting wars all over, or at least take care of the refugees we wouldn't have to. The town of Sodertalje (home to Scania) took in more Iraq refugees than all of the US of A. Combined.
Then again, if you weren't so hot on wars, the Norwegians couldn't export their "Raufoss" rounds to you, so there's that...
Fact of the matter is that we have a very positive trade balance with you, even considering how small Sweden is. So a lot more shit gets done here, than over there... A lot more...
Stefan Axelsson
Just like most leftists, you built up a strawman and associate it with the word 'libertarian'. Like them, you refuse to acknowledge the state's role in corporates' abilities to corner the market, manipulate wages, and stick it to american citizens. The state is the biggest monopoly, and price/wage fixer of them all.
As far as I'm concerned, unions are a natural force. They form when large employers corner the market and squeeze their employees to keep wages artificially low. Note, this is different than statist 5th columns being forced ON employers by left wing activism.
You are prominently displaying your bootlicking agenda, sir. I suspect you suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect, and hence will never be able to acknowledge that.
Allow me to point out where your laughably juvenile anecdote fails miserably :)
Your scenario absolutely requires a helpless consumer, and an almighty producer, and there cannot be any overlap at all, or else your entire premise falls apart immediately. Seeing as that paradigm does not exist on this planet (since the producers must hire consumers to produce the goods), your story works great for the fantasy land your mind inhabits. Unfortunately, it falls apart worse than phrenology here in the real world.
Try again when you're out of middle school, kid :)
Advertisers are Facebook's customers. As someone who works in that industry, I can tell you that there's still some serious bank to be made there if you've got a site with enough eyeballs pointing at it.
Even the Government requires customers (citizens) to govern. If nobody follows you, you're not viable.
It goes back to feudal city-states, or lordships, and beyond. True, the Lord has nearly absolute power over his serfs; but also, the serfs came willingly, the Lord became a Lord by attracting people to his protection. Just like a Clan Chief.
Demand almost always precedes supply, because for one thing almost no need is actually new. So even a new product is targeting an existing demand. If you have demand and no supply, it is like a vacuum, there is pressure to create supply. If there is supply and no demand, there is no pressure to create demand.
It is like the chicken and the egg. Until you have knowledge of how the details work (DNA) it seems impossible to tell which comes first. But once you have some understanding of the details, it becomes obvious that the chicken egg was laid by the proto-chicken. The chicken egg came before the chicken, just as the proto-chicken egg came before the proto-chicken.
It is very rare for a business owner to create a job. Almost all the jobs "created" are going to displace others doing the same work. Which is all good. Only in the rare case where the is pent-up demand and a lack of supply, where by creating a new supply nobody else can create, you satisfy demand that would otherwise not be satisfied. Not only is that rare, but it is also short-term; in the future everybody knows how to satisfy that demand, there will be balanced supply and demand, and creating additional supply will not create additional demand just change who supplies it.
if they see the need to have unskilled or low skilled US workers replaced by better trained and superior H1B's then so be it
Reminds me of a bar where I used to go regularly. I went in one day and they had replaced all the craft brewery taps with Anheuser-Busch and Miller selections. When I complained about it, the manager told me "We saw the need to have unquality or low quality US beer replaced by better quality and superior mass-market versions. What the fuck do YOU know about beer anyway?" I guess he didn't realize that I pioneered many new hop varieties and types of beer as a brewmaster for a local brewery.
I don't go there anymore, but I have to assume that eventually customers will realize they are being served shit and decide to go elsewhere.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Facebook satisfied latent demand to be able to contact people from past schools who were otherwise out of contact. Like a never-ending school reunion.
It doesn't matter if a person spends the time on a "better" mousetrap where there is no demand for one. That is not the limitation. The problem is, if there is not demand for it, how is it even "better?" You can build it, and even if it is better, if there is no demand then nobody will notice it is "better," or agree. I see lots of products offered that are "better," and then the next year they're no longer for sale. Why? Because there wasn't demand for a "better" what-the-what. The only way to sell the better what-the-what is to convince customers it is also a better thingamajig. But if you do that, you haven't changed the demand for thingamajigs or what-the-whats, you've only shifted the demand from one to the other. No new trade value is created, because no new demand was created.
Even people who agree that live traps are morally superior still usually buy traditional mouse traps, for example.
While there is a proper definition of the term "libertarian", most slashdotters who identify as such do not understand it. Indeed, the same can be said for most anyone who self-identifies as "libertarian".
So, most people who self-identify as "libertarian" have less understanding of their own principles and beliefs than ... you. Right. Got it.
I assume you self-identify as a Psychologist, because they are one of the few groups I know of that define words to describe people and then go around telling people they need a professional to tell them which words to use to describe themselves.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I've never been hired or paid by a customer, dipshit. And neither have you.
... or anyone else that wanted you to deal with customers, apparently.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Right, before corporations there was no supply and demand, everybody just meditated when they were hungry and were nourished by falling manna.
You're not Facebook's customer, you're a Facebook user. The customers are the ad and marketing guys.
Almost right. The customers are the ad buyers, true. Using Facebook makes you the product being sold.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
In a speculative activity, those willing to speculate are providing the demand, and whoever they give the money to then creates the supply.
If after the supply is created there is additional demand for that supply, then the speculators might get a return. If not, not.
Supply and demand are not titles that the people have, they are the forces involved in the formulas.
So yourself a favor and read The Wealth of Nations cover-to-cover.
Sorry if I upset yourworldview, here... but we've got fascism masquerading as both capitalism *and* socialism (albeit being a bit more discreet about it on the left, implying that conservatives are easier to fool than liberals... but anyone who's compared NPR to Fox "News" knows that). Perhaps you've gotten actual Libertarianism confused with the Koch Bro's astroturfed synthetic version? *Nothing* is as idealogically anti-Fascist as true Libertarianism.
Jobs predate "money."
A neolithic hunter already has a job. And he can trade for other goods, because there is existing latent demand for what he can supply.
And if there is no demand, because he already sold enough buffalo steaks for everybody to eat, and nobody has freezers, he can go out and get additional supply and it does him no good. His supply can't create any demand; all it can do is satisfy existing demand in a way that benefits him.
People get all crazy thinking that money is some sort of magical force, but it just a medium of exchange that doesn't spoil and has predetermined value. The benefits of a system that encourages capital to move exist, but they're not the benefits you're claiming. The jobs are created by the demand existing, and then being serviced with supply. Encouraging capital movement would only create jobs where otherwise there was an impediment to capital movement. If a natural balance already existed, then injecting capital on the supply side just shifts around who gets the business, it doesn't change how much trade is happening. Whereas injecting capital on the demand side will increase the amount of trade that happens, because people will consume more. But people don't consume MORE because the store they're shopping at has extra money in the bank. That is insanity.
I submit true Communism, which imagines no central government (hence why, even in their Stalinist bullshit, the regime that grew from the Bolsheviks only claimed to be Socialist; they were ostensibly working towards Communism, although we all know better than to believe that for a second).
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
You're assuming that to have the effect, you have to shift companies up or down in the middle of the analysis.
What if I told you that when you get into the weeds, even if you leave the companies in the same category they start in for the whole analysis, the small companies are still creating more jobs?
There are actually deep reasons for it, and it is a huge difference, not the sort of marginal difference that would be created by the effect you imagine. Small businesses that add up to the same amount of production as a larger business will create many more jobs, and will create more trade in the community per job. There are real and well known reasons for that. It is a really basic part of this topic, actually.
Small companies have lower average pay, when everything else is equal. They also require more workers. Ever hear the term "economies of scale?" Ever hear about a merger leading to "increased efficiency" or "reduced redundancy"? Notice that layoffs are mentioned at the same time. There is a reason for that. ;)
Like my dad said a few years back, "inefficiency is another word for jobs." (the context was robots and automation)
People were trading with each other long before companies ever existed, and still do today. It's called barter. No money and no company required.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
It is 100% time for workers/citizens of this company to demand loyalty to the citizenry. Any company hiring H1-B workers or advocating it needs boycotted, stripped of it corporate charter, the assets sold off. Any board of directors, CEO's, or management of American companies' pulling this shit need thrown in prison. If the law is not going to protect its citizens, then it is time for the citizenry to take matters into their own hands. Arm yourselves' my fellow Americans. Organize. Prepare to fight. If not, everything your ancestors worked to establish will be stripped right from beneath you. No other country in the world permits this kind of horse-shit. This is simply and end-run around labor and other laws of common civility for the citizenry by those who are too greedy to give a rats ass about their fellow citizens and have no loyalty to the nation. They are traitors and should be treated as such - Executed. Time to stand-up. Before it is too late.
BTW There are many open source coders that don't get paid for their work that consider it their actual job and would be insulted that you don't consider that work worthwhile.
The truth hurts? Let them be insulted. It's not a job and they are not in an employer-employee relationship.
And your argument about facebook is equally flawed - they will do both.
And if that lone coder or author can't sell a single copy, it's still a hobby, not a job.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The government of a communist economy doesn't control the market as a whole either. Just look at what happened when there were massive crop failures in the former CCCP as just one example. True "command economies" have never existed.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
In Canada, the jobs "no one wants" are in banking and coffee-shops. At least that's what Royal Bank of Canada and Tim Hortons want you to believe when they hire foreign workers.
I can't speak about Facebook, but I can tell you that myself and all other H1Bs that I know - hired by companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon - were all universally sponsored for green cards by their employers as soon as they were eligible (in fact, they would ask this very question - whether one wants to immigrate permanently - as part of the hiring process, and answering "no" may well make them turn you down, because they're not interested in employees that will have to leave in 3-4 years).
H1B is a "dual intent" visa. Meaning that it's not necessarily an immigrant visa, but people who are on it in the country can apply for green card without immediately being kicked out (unlike, say, visitor visa).
Fine, now you're twisting the discussion. Have a nice day.
Just another day in Paradise
I'm not disagreeing with you, but the point of this was a rebuttal against :
"Corporations are not, and have never been, the job creators. Customers are the job creators."
Just another day in Paradise
Strawman. Barter or not, the job is produced by the seller or manufacturer and not by consumer as you stated before. The difference between an individual barterer and a company is the size and scale but not the concept. An individual only creates a job for himself and produces only what he can by himself, so he satisfies very little demand. A company produces more than 1 person can. A company organizes scarce resources including labour, land and capital to produce much more efficiently than a single person can.
Jobs are created in this efficient allocation of resources.
Don't start with me on economics if all you have is political agenda.
You can't handle the truth.
So, how do we deal with the unions who squeeze their members?
Unions certainly have a place, but I grew up around the corrupt UAW, and saw what the union did for my mom (a grocery clerk)...nothing but take a portion of her very small check, and you had to be a member.
Just another day in Paradise
Okay, I should have included small business, and individuals selling their wares. Or, are you agreeing with Barbara's position that only customers create jobs?
Just another day in Paradise
Without a customer, even barter doesn't work. Customers create jobs.
No customers, no jobs.
That's why businesses look at consumer and manufacturer confidence indexes when trying to project their labor needs.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
When's the last time you opened a product labeled "Made in one of those four countries"? Yeah, that's what I thought. Seriously, there needs to be a meme or something that eliminates whatever argument someone made, if the only counter-argument is "it works in 100% white countries where everyone agrees on everything and the population is less than most US states". In 20 years demographic trends will be very, very different in these countries and we may be able to have a sane conversation about these issues, after diversity has been achieved.
I'm not sure why you are equating union strength with racial diversity. And also, I'll point out that all four of those countries have a larger population than most US states.
And without corporations there are no jobs.
That's so wrong it even fails the wrongness test.
You can have plenty of customers and demand, and still have no jobs.
You would have to come up with some very specific qualifiers for this statement to come even close to being true. Jobs existed before corporations. The middle class existed before corporations. They created their own jobs based on what they found customers wanted. You don't need an artificial regulatory construct in order to provide a service - that's just government trying to control the markets. If you grow more food on your land than your family can eat, then guess what? There are customers for your "product" you created with your "job".
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Investors are most definitely customers - that's why companies do "dog and pony shows" for potential investors - they want to sell those investors on the value of the company so that the investor will buy a share of the company.
That they buy a share in the hope of it increasing in value is no different than someone buying a hammer so they can increase their value as a carpenter. Or someone buying a house as part of their long-term investment plan because they expect to sell it at a profit instead of renting.
Which ignores the fact that the only reason those investors are actually willing to buy the stock and listen to the 'dog and pony shows' is if the company actually has a product and customers.
Give me a choice between investing in Apple Computer with a host of "iGadgets" that sell well, or CowPattie Computer that is trying to market "pGadgets" to compete, but has zero sales and no customers, guess which I'm going to invest in? Investors invest in hopes of *return on investment*, the only way that return happens is if the company grows - preferably off the sales of real products that someone wants because if the 'growth' if from layoffs due to shrinking sales, stock buybacks with borrowed money, financial manipulation, etc, then eventually that's not going to be sustainable. The CEO will walk away with his $20million bonus, the company will file bankruptcy, and you the stockholder will get nothing if you aren't smart enough to sell before that happens.
This is a really long and convoluted discussion, and many people seem to have gotten very confused by some ludicrous rhetoric designed to demonize the free market. The arguments get really insane. So I'm going to make it really simple.
In a free market, the consumers (a.k.a. customers) are in control. Producers live and die by their ability to serve consumers. Governments support free markets by enforcing a competitive environment where consumers are in control.
In a command economy (i.e. Communism, dictatorships, Fascism, the US agriculture and health care industries, etc.), the focus is on Producers. Producers are in control, and call the shots, and governments support command economies by ensuring policies that ensure producers are in control. Strictly controlled command economies can only work for industries where the demand is fairly inelastic, since consumers only purchase goods through coercion (people need food, health care, and sometimes transportation for simple basic survival).
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Parent is informative and informed.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Even many staunch union supporters would agree that giving workers more power than employers is a bad idea.
Why? If the workers are supposed to just smile and take it when they get laid off, and get another job, why shouldn't the same be true of businesses? If the workers had more power and used it unwisely the company would just go bust, and the owner would have to get another job, which is how free market capitalism is supposed to work... How is that different?
In fact, with powerful unions comes a more responsible work force, not less. If everyone's job is at stake, then you have to tread carefully. Otherwise, how could we in northern Europe have large multinational companies when we have some of the strongest unions in the world? Our current PM was a former top union boss, and lo and behold, there wasn't any mass flight of Sandvikens and SAABs...
You would think unions would have learned the lesson by now, with all the jobs they have lost by destroying companies with non-union competition and putting ALL of the workers on the street. But it seems the union bosses are doing just as well as the corporate CEOs with their golden parachutes, so fuck all those prols, I guess. It's almost like the elites are cooperating to screw everyone else and only put on a show of "protecting the workers."
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Wrong, demand is a consequence of production. With barter a person works (a job) to feed himself only. Companies create huge amounts of products hoping it would sell. The jobs exist much before any sale whatsoever. If the company is wrong as to how much it can sell and it spends too much on production it will lose money, it may fire people and even shut down but the work was already done long before then, salaries were paid out, people hired and products created.
I run a company and some of what I do doesnt have any clients, I am hoping to create the market. Yet I have 6 people in 2 countries who I employ working on these projects. I created the jobs. My savings are used to pay the salaries. My resources are used to create the product that I invented. Tell me more about jobs and products and customers, I am listening here.
You can't handle the truth.
I think slavery is a part of the market and this reality is why one can't afford to frame issues in the amoral terms of the marketplace. Looking out for one's own interests necessarily includes building a society that provides for all and defends against exploitations many forms. It's high time we seriously build rules that place a barrier underneath us all the theme of which says 'society won't let you become more destitute than this' and then specifies in detail what that level is.
Digital Citizen
The problem is the people behind FWD.org are all enemy's of the people. Because they see all of us a disposable commodity. But if we thought of them that way they would carp bricks. maybe that is why they hire sooo much security.
Which ignores the fact that the only reason those investors are actually willing to buy the stock and listen to the 'dog and pony shows' is if the company actually has a product and customers.
First, plenty of start-ups have no customers and no completed product. Second, you your admission, also reiterated further on:
CowPattie Computer that is trying to market "pGadgets" to compete, but has zero sales and no customers, guess which I'm going to invest in
If you have no customers, you have zero sales. So, customers create the jobs. Not ideas. Not companies.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Wrong, demand is a consequence of production.
That is SO wrong. No matter how many buggy whips or PC-XT clones or CRT monitors you produce, you won't increase demand. Even if you sold the CRT monitors for 1 cent plus shipping, nobody would buy them because they would still be more expensive electricity-wise than a flat screen. Even more so for a 60" CRT TV.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
All demand is consequence (and a trivial one) of production. iPads didn't exist and demand for them didn't exist until thousands of people were paid millions of dollars over a number of years (jobs) to create them.
You can't handle the truth.
Well, dcw3, I've not quite decided what I think about that statement. It doesn't quite fit into my view of things - but it sort of rings true. The customer has to have some want or need that I can provide for, or I'm out of business. Sure, there are lots of OTHER reasons for me to go out of business, but there has to be a customer. I'm still thinking about "Customers are the job creators". to be perfectly honest. They are, and they aren't.
I do know that today's common wisdom in the financial world bucks all the common wisdom learned WW1 and WW2. When I was learning about business, I was taught that "People are your most valuable asset." Today, people are as expendable as the supplies on the cleaning lady's cart.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's not FWD.us ... rather, it is FCKD.us
As other noted, if you are able to train someone else to do the job, then by definition you are able to do the job. How whole premise of the H-1b program is that american workers are in short supply. Training your replacement totally belies that fact. This is about survival of the cheapest, not of the fittest.
Um, that's actually how it works if you own the company. Your income comes from what the customers pay you. I do not own a company now, but at one time I did, so I do know how it works.
and you had to be a member.
And there you go. If you no longer have to be a member of a particular labor union (particularly, if other labor unions can hone in on their turf), then the labor union has strong incentive to do something for its members.
The purpose of the visas should be to allow outside workers to be sourced when they can't be sourced domestically. Therefore there should be no need to pay them less, in fact if they are so valuable, they should be paid more. If that were a requirement, then this problem would solve itself.
Now you're just being willfully obtuse. You can produce as many XT clones as you want, demand will not increase with supply. Also, there were plenty of Windows tablets before the iPad,They didn't sell well because they were too expensive at the time, not because they weren't being produced.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
However, yes, without customers no business is viable, except the government.
The government aren't a business, they are robbers.
Managing what rational choices you have to choose from is the surest way to get you to achieve their goal of getting you to fire yourself having trained a cheaper replacement. Reason is the rationalization of limited options in the absence of imagination.
Plutocrat mentality: "I've got mine now, the rest of you can grovel for scraps."
Table-ized A.I.
Lose too many of your customers and you go broke - see GM and Chrysler as examples.
You don't have to go broke. If you predict future market growth that doesn't occur, you go broke. If you fail to predict market recession you go broke. If you correctly predict market shrinkage and take appropriate action to downsize, you can remain in business.
Say some guy comes along tomorrow with some magical widget, that produces today's automobile for $1000, (there is ~$700 worth of mill steel in an automobile, so it somehow produces the car for $300). If you see this and immediately invest in it, and downsize the rest of your operation that is no longer necessary, you'll remain in business but with much less employees, but if you ignore it, then a competitor will inevitably arise that puts you out of business. If you attempt to adopt the new technology but retain the existing workforce, and maintain existing market prices, you'll surely fail.
Too often this last approach is attempted. Companies adopt the new lowcost manufacturing technology but attempt to maintain prevailing market pricing, and are beaten out of the market by new entrants that don't have the non-production overheads and can thus offer a lower priced, higher quality product. VLSI did this to many computer companies in the 80s and 90s, and ULSI (SoCs) is doing the same to many companies today.
People bitch and moan when companies adopt a more economical production process and lay off some/most of their workers. They bitch and moan when they don't adopt a more economical process and lay off all of their workers. There is really no way around layoffs except to develop new products to soak up the economic gains and job losses of technological progression. Higher unemployment pay might help, as it increases demand for products and allows production to continue during periods where growth in new products hasn't caught up with job losses from production efficiency.
That's not quite true.
If you were to attempt to carry on the actions of a corporation without being incorporated, you would have to pay taxes at every transfer of material or currency between employees, and would quickly go broke. The corporation acts as a shield against government robbery that would kill off any productivity if everyone acted as individuals (at least under current tax code).
There are also a multitude of non-tax regulations that it would be impossible to comply with, such as EPA emissions licensing, healthcare and insurance purchasing, and so forth.
Originally corporations were created to carry out works of a magnitude greater than any person could individually finance, and were mandated to cease at the completion of that work or the repayment of the bond covering that work. For example bridges which collect tolls to pay back investors, and become public once the investors are paid back.
At some point corporations became unlimited ventures, with unlimited scope, and thus the corporation was never terminated. This is the real moral hazard.
Wrong, you are being obtuse. No customer or client is paying a company before the product exists. Whether creating a new product type or just entering an existing field as a competition, the company has to hire people out of its own savings and that means taking the risk of doing something that may as well (in many cases) lose money instead of making any money. The job is created by the person a who is putting the money on the line. If the clients prepaid for the product upfront you could have half an argument, even then it is not true, somebody had to work to find those clients. But there are no clients prepaying anything in most cases, I know it is true in my case.
When you, yourself use your own savings to hire somebody to build something you intend to sell before having any clients paying you anything, then come back and talk here. Some asshole will be waiting to tell you that those jobs were 'created by consumers' ask him what consumer put his money on the line to create the product in the first place.
You are being obtuse because you cannot admit you are talking out of your ass.
You can't handle the truth.
You have just completely inverted Ayn Rand. Either you got her wrong intentionally and are thus dishonest, or your reading comprehension skills are lacking.
In her writings, Rand was NOT opposed to "charity" if an individual CHOSE to give to others, she was opposed to "charity" in the form of people ordering a productive person to "voluntarily" contribute (as-in "give, or we'll take it"). Her big point was that if you are TRULY a "free" person, then NOBODY is ENTITLED to your work product. When poor people say "I am too lazy to, or not competent to, create what you created but I WANT it, so HAND IT OVER!" they have NO right to make that demand! Her assertion that the individual is entitled to his own work product is NOT "evil" or "selfish"; it's honest, moral, and consistent both with the view of the founder's of the US and with Judeo-Christian teaching (which includes "thou shalt not steal" and "thou shalt not covet").
Even Jesus NEVER said ANYBODY should be forced to do charity; the charity he encouraged was VOLUNTARY.
When you have something and CHOOSE to give it to the "less fortunate", THAT is "charity".
When you have something and somebody else takes it by force (either to keep or to give to the "less fortunate" of THEIR choice), THAT is "armed robbery"
When you have something and it is transferred, either by force or by your choice, to those who CHOOSE not to be productive citizens, THAT is "enabling"
Evidence of this being a Biblically-moral position? Try the Apostle Paul's 2nd letter to the Thessalonians:
"... For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you; Neither did we eat any man's bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you: Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an example unto you to follow us. For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread. ..."
Most TEA Partiers CHEER for prosecution of employers of illegals and would happily see H1-B visas ended.
The claim that ANY job is a "job an American will not do" is a COMPLETE LIE. Mike Rowe has proven this wrong time and time again on "Dirty Jobs". The truth is that there are many jobs an American will not do FOR SUPPRESSED WAGES.
Two important points:
1. The law of supply-and-demand says the job will go unfilled until the offered salary is high-enough that somebody will take it. As the offered price rises past that point, the supply of applicants will grow. When the supply of applicants is large enough to satisfy demand, the employer will feel no pressure to increase the offered wage (so it will stop rising). This is all wonderfully self-regulating.... until corrupt crony capitalists bribe politicians to change the laws to let them escape the law of supply-and-demand with foreign labor.
2. If these are "jobs Americans will not do", then WHO will do them after the imported workers become citizens????? (hint: a new wave of illegal immigrants and H1-B visa holders...)
...eventually the lower classes kill the powerful...
Not without lots of help, meaning guns and money, the lawyers come afterward. And then the cycle starts over with the 'new' powerful... la la la life goes on.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"The point was that one author who has millions of customers from sales of a book doesn't have to increase the number of employees." - i wouldn't class one author as an employer so its not a good comparison
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
You would think unions would have learned the lesson by now, with all the jobs they have lost by destroying companies with non-union competition and putting ALL of the workers on the street. But it seems the union bosses are doing just as well as the corporate CEOs with their golden parachutes, so fuck all those prols, I guess. It's almost like the elites are cooperating to screw everyone else and only put on a show of "protecting the workers."
I don't know about american unions, but as I said in other posts, that's most definitely not true about northern European unions (let's call them "Germanic" for short). Not by a long shot. We have the highest standard of living indices known to man, lowest inequality, and well running economies (much better than the US), and some of the strongest unions on the planet. In fact, many big business leaders admit in private that it's the unions that make it easy to do business here. It levels the playing field when it comes to employees, everybody knows the rules, and you don't have to suffer strikes all the time, but can negotiate instead.
Stefan Axelsson
Then then bad-actor companies will just change their business model from "fraudulently contracting out cheap labor" to "fraudulently selling potential citizenship" from the limited H1-B pool. Why would wages rise?? Employees might accept less for a head-start in the arduous process of US citizenship!
When each cohort of employees leave the H1-B system to find other US jobs (not necessarily the ones they were hired for on paper) then the bad companies will simply grab a new willing batch and continue.
By making it a path to citizenship, you allow private companies to profit by selling a public resource.
The fellow asks about workers being forced to train their UNQUALIFIED replacements and the fool responds that the workers shouldn't expect to get jobs they aren't qualified for...
Is this guy a robot? Because his response sounds like what a PR robot would say if I jammed my arm up his muppet ass and twittled my fingers.
Obviously the laid off workers were qualified for the work because they were doing it and they trained their replacements.
So... Would kermit the PR guy like to respond? Anyone want to jam their arm up his ass and see if they can provoke another robotic fucking response?
What was most odd about that exchange was that the fellows were presuming to joke as if their commentary were witty or contextually relevant.
The entire thing is baffling.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Nobody's going to hold you up and carry you around..
I dunno. Wasn't what they did to the French nobles back arount 1789?
So...they are good enough to train their cheap replacements but not good enough to do the job. Right. Lars Dalgaard is an evil man.
You would think unions would have learned the lesson by now, with all the jobs they have lost by destroying companies with non-union competition and putting ALL of the workers on the street. But it seems the union bosses are doing just as well as the corporate CEOs with their golden parachutes, so fuck all those prols, I guess. It's almost like the elites are cooperating to screw everyone else and only put on a show of "protecting the workers."
I don't know about american unions, but as I said in other posts, that's most definitely not true about northern European unions (let's call them "Germanic" for short). Not by a long shot. We have the highest standard of living indices known to man, lowest inequality, and well running economies (much better than the US), and some of the strongest unions on the planet. In fact, many big business leaders admit in private that it's the unions that make it easy to do business here. It levels the playing field when it comes to employees, everybody knows the rules, and you don't have to suffer strikes all the time, but can negotiate instead.
Oh, sure, Germany is doing great, thanks to investments in industry and education for many decades. Not sure about unions - Germany has extensive labor regulations and employment laws. It's nothing like the "at-will employment" used in the US and other countries. Maybe the unions helped put those in place. There are actually better employment protection in the laws there than most unions can get through negotiations in the US.
And, of course, none of that extends to other members of the EU - it's just Germany. Much of the rest of the country is borrowing Euros to buy German goods. And Germany's answer is austerity.
So good on Germany for their ability to compete. Too bad about Spain. And Italy. And Portugal. And Greece. And Ireland.
'Schaffe, schaffe, Häusle baue!'
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I don't get it. If they're so incompetent that they can't be kept as workers, how can they be competent enough to be training their replacements?
Why don't all the workers collectively agree to not impart their obviously flawed work skills and knowledge to their replacements?
If my boss came to me and said that he was replacing me, I'd say fine. Documentation is on the wiki, the source for everything is written up as literate programs, the only things out-of-date are and --- if you want me to up-date those, call me tomorrow and we'll work up rates.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Say that the system is difficult to develop and get running. The decent programmers need to build it, but you can hire sub-standard programmers to maintain and add to it?
But you still need the customers - if nobody wants your product (say men's platform shoes, women's peasant dresses, and ultra-wide bell bottoms for both from the '60s), it won't matter how low you get the cost of production, because not enough people are going to want to buy it to make it worth getting out of bed in the morning.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
That said:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2...
Walmart employees in Quebec, Canada tried to unionize. Walmart just closed up shop and went someplace else laying off everyone. Year later (10 actually), they lose in supreme court and are forced to pay damages. However no word on what those damages are, and I bet they are fighting that. Not to mention the fact they the folks don't get jobs back, or retroactively for the last decade. On top on that, the people who work at Walmart, aren't exactly going to be rolling in it either, many would have lost big in the meantime trying to make ends meet while waiting a decade for maybe some kind of court settlement. It is no wonder that employees are afraid to unionize. Unions have been getting busted or weaker for a long time now. Which if you think about it is crazy, when we start talking about the 1% and how the we have never had such wealth inequality before...
Henry Ford understood this, pay your workers enough to afford the product they make and you will build a society that is better for everyone.
He went one better. He and his marketing department understood the propaganda value of publicly pretending to have the above opinion. The bottom line is that retention of employees (workforce turnover being a major problem for his attempts to make a high quality mass production vehicle for the time) was far more valuable to him than the increased purchasing power of his workforce.
It's also because if you roll over, they screw you on the benefits. "Let go" becomes "quit" or "fired", which can impact unemployment payments, and they often also threaten your severance or even pension (if there is one).
Yeah, it's just comparably better than the other place, where the thermostat is set to 200f.
Actually, it sounds like a lot of the choices we're given these days, be it employment or political party...
Well, it's not just Germany. There's Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria etc. doing great, for example.
Now of course, economy is a complex beast, but compare the deficits in this table with the US 2014 deficit of 2.8% of GDP (which was a record low). You'll see that most EU countries are doing better or much better than the US even though the EU as a whole is doing slightly worse as some of the large southern economies are pulling the rest of us down.
So, as is always the case these days, news reporting skews the general picture to be (much) worse than it already is. That the southernes aren't doing to good is furthermore not exactly news... They've always done poorly, one way or another... (So why someone thought it would be a good idea to include them in the Euro I don't know.)
Note also today's news that even if Greece didn't pay back their loans, it wouldn't be a disaster, and could be handled quite nicely. Not that we don't care, it's a precedent we don't want set, but still. The worst is over. And if you're looking for economic stability, go to Northern Europe. South of the Alps is and has always been a crap shot. And stay out of the east if you don't know what you're doing... :-)
Stefan Axelsson
And with that, discussion of the important issues in the original post was hijacked. Unscrupulous employers blaming their workers is nothing new. The real problem here is debt. If the people who work for these asses had cash in the back instead of debt milestones around their necks they could flick these guys the finger and tell them train the cheap foreign Labour themselves. Good luck with that. Calling your people lazy when you're just a greedy prick is bad karma.
Only boring people are ever bored.
GM and Chrysler aren't good examples. They deliberately crashed their companies so it could become politically acceptable to build their cars in China. This was Ovid to me from 2003. They we're being told what they needed to do.... and ignored all the advice. There had to be a reason that. New factories in China was the reason.
Only boring people are ever bored.
so why not just collectively request an H–1B visa audit? Maybe a few losses on cases like this would bring attention to the abuse rampant in the system...
Both Cobut and Dalgaard are not US citizens and are foreign nationals. We have now degenerated to the point where foreign nationals are telling us that we need to hire more foreign nationals, like their brothers, cousines, and the legions of whores that they require.
The former totally describes my former boss, who swore that he wasn't an elitist, yet he'd describe Hispanics as the "underclass".
He went one better. He and his marketing department understood the propaganda value of publicly pretending to have the above opinion. The bottom line is that retention of employees (workforce turnover being a major problem for his attempts to make a high quality mass production vehicle for the time) was far more valuable to him than the increased purchasing power of his workforce.
It's not a zero sum game. Ford cared for both. He was already concerned with making the car cheap enough for mass consumption. Including his workers as part of the masses who will consume his cars is not propaganda, but merely a corollary of his goal.
Henry Ford created the modern debt-driven consumer. He didn't pay well enough to buy a car, he offered FINANCING to buy the car.
+++OK ATH
No, I disagree. If Ford could have built his cars to the level of quality he desired with a cheaper workforce, he would have done so.
Sure, Ford had a strange concern for the morality of his workforce to the extent that he created a sort of "secret police" who monitored off the job employee behavior. But he also obsessed with reducing the costs of his cars and wages are an obvious cost. For example, it took decades for the labor unions to get into Ford plants.
As to the "five dollar day", it was definitely used as propaganda by Ford both for marketing and hiring. Propaganda doesn't mean falsehood. It means distributing information and stories with a particular bias in order to promote a particular viewpoint.
Then why are the workers being forced (extorted) to train their replacements? Seems to me if the previous employees were so incompetent, their employer wouldn't require them to train their replacements.
Ken
Right, because when enough consumers wanted an automobile, that caused the industry to burst forth out of the ground, turning out automobiles and creating jobs.
The guy that sat in the garage, working on plans and building prototypes? He was only doing that because the best available market research indicated that people wanted a mode of transportation that didn't produce feces as a by-product.
You've never actually met an entrepreneur have you.
Ken
Racists gonna race
How is it the Chinese economy hasn't figured this out yet? I doubt many workers at Foxconn plants can afford to buy one of the iPhone 6s they make...
When Henry Ford doubled pay so his workers could all buy cars, did he also build parking garages so they could drive them to work?
Ken
This Union contract I have right here is VERY MUCH legal and binding. I work in the US. You guys keep doing your damnedest to kill off the Unions, and you wonder why your boss is taking a shit right down your throat. Guess who isn't getting replaced by Habib? This engineer right here, that's who.
Whatever. Your argument is no different than builders who build homes on speculation. They create jobs through investment (including in themselves) in the hope of making a profit. If they didn't think there would be a buyer, they wouldn't build. Take the buyer out of the equation and there's no more jobs, and no way to keep producing homes. So customers create jobs.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Maybe that AC didn't but I sure did. You're ate up with the MBA culture. You refer to real, living, breathing people as unskilled, skilled, and "talent". I bet you also somehow make them synergize vertically integrated from source to shipment while emphasizing high value, cost effective problem solutions.. You're so deep into the shit pond of "human resources" that you everything you see is brown and you've grown immune to the stink years ago. You and people who think like you are part of the problem, not the solution.
SO like he said: "they are willing to make greater sacrifices that[sic] most Americans are used to." You sound jelly, bro. Try cheating next time.
When the H-1B were created in 1992, it was meant as a solution for worker shortages. That is why there is a 3-6 year limit on employment and no automatic residency path. The stop-gap was there until the business and education communities could train enough residents to fill the positions. After the term was complete, the visa holders would return to their country of origin. Clearly, it is not being used in that manner.
Simple solutions rarely work because the world is not "simple". Within ten seconds of reading your post, the first way to route around this is for the corporations to lobby/cheat/steal/whatever it is they do to set the TOP MARKET RATE to the rate they WANT to pay H1Bs. When they do that, they will dissuade Americans who want those jobs because who's (with college skills) gonna work for $22K/yr (the hypothetical new TOP MARKET RATE)? That just gives the company justification to hire EVEN MORE H1Bs. In the future, try running your ideas by a random child on the street before posting them on /. and making yourself look retarded.
He is also a billionaire, part of the 1% club, which clearly hates labor (the peasants). He founded SuccessFactors before selling it to SAP. He ran it with a skeleton crew and contractors every which way. He touted how awesome and wonderful the company was to the employees that ate up that propaganda, asking them to work harder so he can shove more money in his pockets. Lars is a bag of shit.
Same user, backup account given the mob bombing my account.
----
Every business is speculation that somebody will buy your product. Customers do not create jobs, people who pay money to the employees create jobs.
Whether those jobs produce something that some third party customer buys or that job is simply satisfying some demand of the employer it doesn't matter, the job is created by the person paying money.
Do you understand the concept of moving money out of your own bank account to somebody else's bank account or not? If you do, then you should imagine person A moving $$$ to person B in exchange for person B doing some work.
Person A created the job for person B by paying for it.
There may or may not be some other customer paying for the PRODUCT that was created in the process of doing the job, but the job is created by the person paying money in form of a salary to somebody.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
You aren't even trying are you? He said quite plainly "And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at him." Jesus was a proponent of a "charitable" government- the matter of who's decision it was, was irrelevent. You are a terrible debater like most Xstians. You're bad and should feel bad for being bad.
GM and Chrysler both went under due to poor leadership. For GM, the CEO (Ron Wagoneer) continued to depend on sales of gas guzzlers such as Hummers long after it was obvious that people wanted something more economical. In Chrysler's case, it was because of internal problems that had existed from the time that Daimler had acquired them - it was a bad corporate fit - and they should have appointed Bob Lutz instead of Bob Eaton, and they wouldn't have been acquired by Daimler.
Ford, on the other hand, saw the gathering storm clouds, and put in place over $20 billion of loans that they could tap to help weather the storm. They even mortgaged their logo. They also trimmed the number of models, and focused more on fuel economy, which is why they didn't need a bail-out. They had smart management and the right product.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Classifications assist people in understanding the dynamics that make things like the processes behind CEO pay understandable. It's easy to say that they're "greedy" or "corrupt" or some other useless moralizing explanation of what is going on, but it really doesn't explain it. Poor people can be greedy and corrupt too, and that doesn't make them squat.
It's easy to poke fun of buzzwords as well. The difference between the gibberish you wrote and the buzzwords that those people use is that their gibberish makes them shitloads of money.
I'm less concerned about getting angry about the situation and more concerned about understanding how you can have what appears to be non-performing executives make metric fucktons of money. The answer is very simply that they get their money the same way that a popular artist or a popular singer does it. That is to say, some degree of skill or talent, followed up constant, and merciless promotion of themselves and their story as a product. And, like rock stars or other people who sign their contracts before they have to produce anything new, CEOs don't get fired for shit work, they just don't get re-signed.
You're probably confusing my "rock star" comparison with me thinking CEOs or people like that are talented artists or something. While some certainly have real skills, I'm more concerned about the comparison of how they make deals for employment and obtain bulletproof compensation (ie. they sign actual contracts with provisions on a more equal footing to corporations than most individuals can).
Aren't they actually based on old british models?
What you say about entrenching is true though - we likely won't be rid of the current 'form' of corporation until one of two things happens:
1) They manage to obtain extraterritoriality and things reach Shadowrun levels of horrific within weeks, but technically they're an entirely new 'kind' of corporation
2) The world is cleansed in nuclear fire - which is probably their fault anyways
Person A created the job for person B by paying for it.
And person A is the customer of person B. Same as in any other job. Piss off the customer - your boss - and no job for you.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Finally, you are realising that every employee is provided by a job by the employer. EMPLOYER - the person who decided that the job is necessary (for whatever reason at all) and figured out where to get the money to hire the EMPLOYEE.
Cause and effect, basics of reasoning. Cause: person A wants to do something, finds the money and as a result hires person B. Effect: person B has the job, the job was created by person A.
What the job is and what is produced is secondary. It may or may not end up being paid for by somebody else LATER. ....
There was no life in the Universe, not even planets or stars existed until there was a SUPPLY of material that allowed those to be created. Was there a demand or market for material to create stars before material existed? No. But once there was SUPPLY the market was FORMED.
Cause and effect. Not the other way around, no matter what liberal idiotic agenda wants to present, the agenda of people with political ideas that go directly against logic, reasoning, reality.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
My question is why are these people training their replacements. Why didn't they walk out the door and leave the company hanging?
I understand that it is a few more months pay but is the money worth what you are being screwed over for? Really why would you help out a company that has no loyalty to its employees. Are you the guy that helps the mugger steal an old woman's purse? If you don't walk out you are only helping someone that doesn't give a fuck about you or your family.
Cause: person A wants to do something, finds the money and as a result hires person B. Effect: person B has the job, the job was created by person A.
A customer is someone who buys goods or services. Person A is a customer of person B. If person B does not supply the goods or services, they will cease to be a customer of person A, even if it's an employer-employee relationship.
Nobody hires someone they know can't do the job, except in cases of nepotism or fraud. They won't satisfy the customer, who may be their employer.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Jesus fucking christ, precisely, I hire people who satisfy my requirements and I pay money to those people. Amazing! That's just amazing.
Am I doing it out of 'nepotism' or 'fraud'? No, I am building products and services that I am HOPING to sell and I am also doing some custom work for clients that I found already.
The money that I pay as salaries did not have to be paid for those products that I decided to build before having a single client outside of myself. So I am the employer and I created the jobs by hiring people and training them and giving them tasks to do and paying them money out of my own fucking pocket. Out of MY bank account into THEIR bank account for things I want them to do.
Whether or not I sell my products and services further to somebody else does NOT concern the people that I am paying to work for me, as far as they are concerned when the month is over they get paid. It doesn't matter to them if I burn the product or sell it or do whatever with it, they get paid either way.
I wish I could buy a yacht for 10,000USD but I can not. I have the 10,000USD to spend on a yacht but nobody is supplying yachts at 10,000USD. There is no fucking supply of yachts at 10,000USD.
If somebody can come up with a way to sell me a yacht at 10,000USD, guess what: they got themselves a customer, a market that otherwise doesn't exist because there are no yachts at 10,000USD.
In fact I would love to buy a yacht at 500USD. Even a more complicated question: where are these fucking yachts at 500USD? There are none, there is no supplier that can do it. The problem is lack of supply, never lack of demand.
You (or somebody) asked earlier: how come the companies are looking at 'customer confidence' numbers in the USA to figure out what to do with their stock? Well, the fact is that USA is an unproductive country and the unproductive country that it is, people in it have very limited ability to buy things. The word conman comes from confidence. The confidence trick is what is being at play here, it's not whether people have jobs and productive jobs at that to buy what they want, the question is: will they go into more debt to buy what they cannot afford?
Now, when your economy is built on confidence and specifically on confidence of consumers to go into more debt rather than on productivity - you have yourself a problem. In a productive economy it is not about confidence of a consumer, it is about employment rate. REAL employment rate, not fictitious bullshit pushed by the government propagandists. Real price of money, real inflation, real employment, real productive output.
Without a real economy all that we can talk about is confidence tricks.
Back to the question at hand, who creates jobs. Jobs are created by people who hire other people for money. Not by some ephemeral down the line client who may or may never materialise, but by the person who puts his own money on the table.
Learn something useful in your life rather than listening to garbage political propaganda of the collectivist state.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Changing the labels to "employer" and "employee" is no different from bogus patents that throw in "on the Internet."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I can't leave comments with my status in this forum due to do gooders who truly believe that I shouldn't be able to leave comments here under my account, so here it goes as an AC.
---
OMG, you have already done enough mental contorting and pretzel-twisting to try and justify your initial statement, don't you think?
You are now firmly exactly where I was at the beginning of this thread, the employer is the job creator. It doesn't matter if you call the employer 'customer' of the employee, employee didn't create the job, the employer did.
But there is a gigantic difference between an employer who created the job to build a product or a service and the end consumer of the perishable good that was created in that process. The difference being that the end consumer didn't think much about the entire chain of events that led him to buying and using that product, the employer, the person who built the business, saved the money (maybe borrowed it, that's fine, but it was still saved by somebody), found the people who he hired, possibly trained them, provided them with the tools that they needed to do the work, ensured that proper management was provided, whatever that is, etc.etc.
That is the person who created the job, not the final consumer, who the employer hoped would be there, who was in the mind of the employer, the business owner, when the business owner started the chain of events that both, created jobs, created products, services and found the final clients, advertised to them, provided the product all the way to the stores, or however they were sold (if they were sold).
Now of course, economy is a complex beast, but compare the deficits in this table [wikipedia.org] with the US 2014 deficit of 2.8% of GDP (which was a record low). You'll see that most EU countries are doing better or much better than the US even though the EU as a whole is doing slightly worse as some of the large southern economies are pulling the rest of us down.
I think you are a bit confused. The EU (United States of Europe) is ONE economy with ONE currency - the Euro. It's sort of like the US before the civil war, with Germany looking and acting like New England and the southern European states looking like the US southern states. Except, of course, that Germany wants economic slaves while New England wanted to eliminate slave ownership.
That the southernes aren't doing to good is furthermore not exactly news... They've always done poorly, one way or another...
That's quite a load of bullocks. The Greek people, for instance, have always been one of the hardest working cultures on the continent. For you to simply claim it's because they are in trouble because they are lazy is really stunning.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The employer is the customer. It is the customer who creates jobs. That is what I said originally. That the customer is the employer doesn't matter one whit, so don't be a twit.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Bullshit, that's not the original idea there. The original idea was to say that the employer is not the one who creates the job but the consumer.
I quote:
Corporations are not, and have never been, the job creators. Customers are the job creators.
- what the hell does that mean exactly if not to say that the business is not creating the jobs but customers ***of business***?
Your statement denies the fact that corporations create jobs. Now you are saying that corporations are job creators by the virtue of them being 'customers'. WTF?
It's because you lack the ability to understand that in every transaction there's a buyer and a seller. The employer is the buyer of people's labour, hence they are the customer.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Right, and you do NOT consider corporations to be BUYERS of labour? Do you even understand your own words?
When the corporation is buying labour, they are the customer. The corporation, aka the customer, is the one creating the job. Customers always create the jobs, even in the case of buying labour (they're certainly not SELLING labour to their employees).
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Ok, so first of all, I quote:
Corporations are not, and have never been, the job creators. Customers are the job creators.
and I quote:
When the corporation is buying labour, they are the customer. The corporation, aka the customer, is the one creating the job.
Your argument goes PUFFFFFF. Disappears. Nothing is left. +1 to -1, 0.
Secondly, splitting hairs now, ha? "When corporation is buying labour, it's the customer". Corporations ALMOST ALWAYS BUYS LABOUR, who do you think buys labour? Other people also buy labour, but corporations certainly BUY labour.
I know of thousands of corporations that buy labour every day, all day.
your argument goes PUFFFFFF. Disappears. Nothing is left. +1 to -1, 0.
You suck at math. You left out the fact that both the buyer and the seller are getting something they want. The seller (worker) is getting money, and the buyer (business) is getting work done. Each is better off than they would have been before. It's called a win-win situation. Each one comes out ahead. If they didn't, there would be no deal (unless we go back to slave labour).
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You are now just stuck to a completely losing position, after being shown that you walked into it yourself by both proposing that A is true and that NOT A is true.
Too bad for you, math is so simple in that case. Corporations create jobs and you said they are not and have never been creating jobs.
You said corporations can buy labour, they are customers of labour and as customers they create jobs.
Too bad for you that you were taught never to admit that you are simply wrong. Simply wrong and shown to be wrong in your own words but the system of so called 'education' that you were put through did not intersect you with the concepts of logic and reasoning, instead it instilled the religious ideology into you.
Only religious ideology will never accept that it is wrong under any circumstances, scientific reasoning, logic, math, these principles understand what a mistake is and people exercising these principles can admit to being wrong and they can adjust their own understanding by admitting being wrong and learn from it not to be wrong again. Too bad this is not something you understand.
You can't handle the truth.
You still don't get it - Corporations are no different from individuals when it comes to buying labor. Both are customers (or consumers - there is no difference) for those who are willing to sell their labor, and it's only when they actually BUY the labor that a job is created. If you have no buyers, you're not going to create jobs.
Even when someone gambles capital to start up a business, the investor is the customer (because they hope to get a return on their investment). It will create jobs as long as funds are available - either from the original customer (the investor - who may also be the business owner, investing in themselves to create their job) or other customers. Once that's gone ... no jobs.
You need to adjust your understanding. You seem to think that adding the word "corporation" makes them NOT customers (or consumers) when they buy labor. Kind of like the people who add "on the internet" as magic pixie dust. And your math still sucks because you failed to realize that it's almost never a zero-sum game.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I think you are a bit confused. The EU (United States of Europe) is ONE economy with ONE currency - the Euro.
Nope. Not even close. The Eurozone excludes important economies, such as the UK. So their poor state doesn't have anything to do with the Euro per se.
Now it's not surprising that an american would see the EU as a US style federation, but it's anything but. Far from it. All the member states retain their full freedom, the limits of which are only voluntarily agreed to by convention. Hence the Euro was as doomed as all previous European currency collaborations, when push came to shove, there wasn't sufficient power to actually punish the countries not holding up their end of the bargain.
Now traditionally, that was "fixed" by leaving the cooperation, hence it was thought that by actually agreeing on one currency, that would take that option away and make everybody keep in line. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the opposite. Instead we got all the old problems without the old solution available. Hence they're in worse shape than they were before...
That couldn't happen in a federation such as the US as the central bank has actual teeth. In the Eurozone, it doesn't. Hence the two economies are not comparable.
That's quite a load of bullocks. The Greek people, for instance, have always been one of the hardest working cultures on the continent. For you to simply claim it's because they are in trouble because they are lazy is really stunning.
Nice way of putting words in my mouth... But at least we now know that you consider yourself Greek, and hence the big mouth, and bad manners have been explained... ;-)
No, I didn't ascribe the Greek/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese economic situation to laziness. As a matter of fact, I pointedly, didn't ascribe it to any one, multitude of, or particular cause. I just observed that these economies have never done well in modern times, for more than a short period of time at a stretch. And that's even when pumping in billions to try and get them on the right track. (Hell, this is even true within Italy, and hence the Lega Nord party's rhetoric to get rid of the "south," meaning southern Italy).
Of course, it goes without saying that however hard the Greeks work (or not), has no bearing whatsoever on the Spanish economy... You might as well blame their lack of economic success on too much sun. At least they have that in common.
Stefan Axelsson
Math or no math, it's simple in this case. You specified: corporations never create jobs.
Then you specified: corporations create jobs.
Too bad I guess that you are missing the most important part of this conversation, your complete inability to admit and learn from your own mistakes.
You can't handle the truth.
Or let's put it this way - if corporations did NOT buy the work of workers, would there be any jobs? Nope.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
What part of that don't you get?
- the part where you are incapable of admitting of simply being wrong.
Corporations hire people, it doesn't matter in what 'role'. They purchase labour and thus they create jobs.
Corporations are customers of labour, but that's not what I am arguing about, I am very specifically pointing at your inability to follow your own logic.
When you said: corporations are not creating jobs and have never created jobs, you did not put any caveats there, saying that corporations actually always create jobs when they hire people because they are customers to labour.
I KNOW corporations create jobs, I run a corporation and I know what it means to buy labour thus creating jobs. You, on the other hand, talk out of both sides of your mouth.
You can't handle the truth.
When a corporation (or anyone else) purchases labor, they are the customers of the people selling the labor. Only customers create jobs.
If the corporation didn't purchase the labor, where would the jobs be (and this is a serious question as we move to automate more jobs). The answer is - there would be no jobs, because there would be no need to purchase labor - the corp would no longer be creating jobs because it would no longer be buying labor, either directly, or through other entities that in turn buy labor.
So, when you say "I know what it means to buy labour thus creating jobs," would those jobs have been created if you had not bought the labor? No. And when you buy it, you are the customer of the person selling their labor. You being the buyer makes you the customer. No getting around that. So, corporations don't create jobs because they're corporations, but because they're customers to those selling their labor.
You, on the other hand, made the claim (debunked above) that demand is a consequence of production. To the contrary, the fewer people selling their labor because their services are no longer needed because companies are buying less labor, the less consumer demand, because people just don't have the money to be customers in their turn.
I didn't have to add any caveats, because my original statement is true on its own - only customers create jobs, and you cannot prove otherwise.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You are a gigantic liar, which became clear as day over the course of this thread. Good luck to you in all your endeavors, liar. A liar lies even as his lies are clearly pointed out.
'Corporations are not and have never created jobs' + 'corporations create jobs because they buy labour'. This is on you, I have nothing to do with it. Production allows consumption, never the other way around. Without production there is no consumption. Production creates the markets. You don't understand that part, fine. That is just economic ignorance and stupidity and likely class warfare, but making opposing statements and denying them outright in the same thread is a clear sign of a liar and I do not waste time on liars.
You can't handle the truth.